


Hope Hangs Slack

by TheVeryLastValkyrie



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-27
Updated: 2016-08-06
Packaged: 2018-03-26 00:40:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 72,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3830728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheVeryLastValkyrie/pseuds/TheVeryLastValkyrie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fifty-two point five degrees: Milady de Winter strikes a dangerous deal with the Duke of Buckingham. Forty-eight point eight degrees: Athos is entrusted with the welfare of France's ambassador to the court of Charles I. All is fair in love and war, and the challenge of a pale blue glove will only tighten the noose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I'm deeply indebted to [bibliolatress](http://bibliolatress.tumblr.com) for creating and curating the most extraordinary chapter-by-chapter playlist to accompany this fic. For your listening pleasure, _Forgiveness With Teeth_ can be found [here](http://http://8tracks.com/rathrbereading/forgiveness-with-teeth) (tracklist [here](http://bibliolatress.tumblr.com/post/139606794107/what-no-one-ever-talks-about-is-how-dangerous)).

_‘I need’._

_Need is a word I never use, and with good reason: I never need. I want (everybody wants), and then I get, so I never need. Need is lower than want, to my mind, need runs deeper than want. If I allow myself to need, I am allowing need to flow through my blood. I am licensing it to write itself all over my face, to scar me as love has scarred me (love;another word I never use)._

_There are no half measures with need. You can and must need with your whole body, and your whole mind, and your whole soul. You must need with every part of yourself._

_Need is for fools, and I am nobody’s fool._

_– London, 1632_

“Now you know it all.” She spreads her fingers, white and brittle against the gilt of the embroidered cushion. The gold thread is too scratchy to stroke, and speaks volumes about the man who chose the cushions; she makes a fist, and now her knuckles stand out whiter than white.

The Duke of Buckingham chose everything in this room, in fact, it being his private closet. He makes his deals in the lap of luxury, enclosed by chequerboard panelling in honey and dark-coloured wood, enthroned on a chair with a straight back and padded arms. That too speaks volumes, tells more than it intends about a man who enjoys comfort but understands the effect of a military carriage. He’s handsome too, more Italian than English, hair black, eyes black, nose bold, mouth thin-lipped and mobile. The eyebrows run exactly parallel to the cheekbones, slightly slanting, but these rarely move. It’s all in those eyes, that mouth. It’s all in the Italian marble of his expression.

“So you have no idea who your father is?”

“I only have my mother’s word he existed at all.”

That mouth forms a small curve at its right extreme, and a dimple appears in the right cheek. “How refreshingly un-Papist you are. No, Milady, I doubt yours was an immaculate conception. Still…” He considers her, adrift in a sea of blue skirts (as if that could ever lessen the green snap of her eyes). “He could well have been English.”

It isn’t what she’s expecting to hear, and her eyebrows aren’t as circumspect as his. “What are you suggesting, Your Grace?”

“That this country – my country – might be your country also.” He sits back, sits forward, crosses one leg at the knee. His calves are nicely formed for a gentleman of leisure. “And any service you rendered my country would then be considered patriotism, Papist or no.”

“I don’t kill,” she says quickly. “Not anymore.”

“Because you are not the cardinal’s creature anymore.”

Anne has been in London three months. In those three months, she has tried. She has tried to put up partitions around her behaviours, her favourite novels, her best intentions, all to make sense of what she no longer understands: herself. She stretches out the hand bunched in her lap towards a ghost in a white bodice, but the happiness associated with the memory evades her. She feels everything dully, as if through glass or water, but at least she feels – at least she is trying, though trying includes (perhaps will always include) walking at night through the shit of London in hand-finished shoes, seeing if human waste recognises its own.

“I am no man's creature.”

The Duke’s smile runs all the way across his upper lip and down the other side.

**.**

_Wages, suitable to the role of servant: to M. Planchet, the sum of…to M. Bazin, the sum of…the cat sat on the mat. The cat sat on the mat the cat sat on the mat the cat sat on the mat._

_The cat cat cat sat sat sat on the mat mat mat._

_Cat._

_Sat._

_Mat._

_– Paris, 1632_

“Well, you look like you’re enjoying yourself.”

Athos, who has been descending slowly towards the weathered surface of the table with every new line of nonsense, straightens suddenly and wishes he hadn’t. He should know better than to be startled by d’Artagnan, who moves like a cat and smirks like one besides.

“Is that any way to speak to your captain?”

But he enquires in a spirit of jest, meaning his features have just such a veneer of blankness that his friend knows better than to backtrack or apologise. There’s been a little more distance between them of late – there’s had to be, what with the war with Spain and the inverse exorcism of Aramis, who’d travelled further spiritually than physically on the road to Douai – but that changes nothing, and neither does this raise in status. They are brothers in a different way, these two, older and younger, and both overcompensating equally for their emotions: Athos refuses to feel anything anywhere anyone might see, and d’Artagnan feels too much, both in public and in private.

“It is if it’s you.”

Three months have passed, and the captain hasn’t yet grown used to being the captain, to being called the captain, to having to lead in name as well as in deed. He’s a natural polariser of men, but giving orders reminds him too much of who he was before he was who he is now, and that life doesn’t bear dwelling upon, not with war on their doorstep. The garrison has been mobilised for weeks, but the Louvre remains as silent as a cloister, and that, and endless requisitions, and the secret he keeps deep in the bowels of his new desk are all putting him on edge.

“I assume you have a reason for coming up here that doesn’t include mocking me?” He forgets himself enough to bite lightly on the end of the quill, and the ink tastes sharp and filthy. “I have Porthos for that, and the pleasure of his company always has added spice since he might try to remove someone’s head at any moment.”

The late morning light makes the skin beneath d’Artagnan’s chin (unshaven, and yet on the whole hairless, much to his dismay) seem more bronze than usual. He has more of the classic to his aspect than Athos, something neither would notice if it were pointed out to them, or care about if it were. “There was a messenger.”

“When?”

“Five minutes ago.”

“From?”

The note isn’t even sealed, Treville has written in such haste. The tails of the words go on too long, bleeding into the rounds of the words below, making the lines run together. It’s legible nonetheless.

“Porthos. Aramis.”

“Ready when you are, Captain.”

No more mockery today, clearly, nothing more than a cloak and a sword and a horse and a pistol apiece. Madame d’Artagnan’s remedies for catarrh, as efficacious and foul-tasting as they are, will just have to wait.


	2. The Ambassador

The noise of heavy boots on polished floors is louder than a pack of polished court ladies. Perhaps it’s because the ladies themselves are silent these days: worried, clustering around the queen they so recently abandoned, wringing their hands over present and future husbands. Perhaps it’s because they no longer flounce and flutter at the sight of musketeers, for all Porthos still manages to share a meaningful glance with a pair of blue eyes in a silk butterfly-trimmed blue gown.

“Took you long enough.” Treville is customarily curt, though better dressed these days. He falls into step beside the men who are still his men, adding his own steps to the cacophony.

“I apologise.” Athos inclines his head. “There was the small matter of actually getting here.”

The Minister for War grunts, amusement partially concealed by the sandy camouflage of beard and moustache. “You’d do well not to keep His Majesty waiting.”

“We are, as always, at His Majesty’s service.”

And with that eminently acceptable response, they five enter the presence chamber and bow as one. Aramis hangs back, and the sugarplum-shaped mouth of Anne of Austria pulls in slightly; the teardrop pearls on her earrings shiver, but she gives no other indication that anything is amiss. He doesn’t look at her, and she doesn’t look at him, so anyone who was unaware of the depth of their desire to look at one another would remain unaware even if he took it into his head to examine the Queen at that very moment. On his left, Aramis feels the solid press of d’Artagnan’s shoulder against his. On his right, Porthos, is already in position.

“Captain!” The King was cast down first by the death of his favourite cardinal, then by the betrayal of his favourite courtier, but he is incapable of being down for long. Beaming like a proud father at the man with years of age and decades of experience on him, he clasps his hands. “We are delighted by your new appointment.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty. The honour is…unspeakably great.”

Athos had no intention of playing the game (the game he was arguably born to play), but this is the hand he’s been dealt, so play he will. The others tune out as Treville mounts the dais, taking a place of honour beside and a little behind the King, like a blunt-featured shadow. The Earl of Portland, yellow hair hanging to his shoulders, is nearby, twitching now and again due to a nervous complaint, the result of having no official title and being moved around like a pawn at his monarch’s pleasure.

“I have no doubt you shall acquit yourself splendidly, Captain…Athos?” Louis frowns. “We must call you Captain Athos, surely, as you are Comte de la Fère no longer.”

“Indeed, Your Majesty.”

“But that is the name by which we  _previously_ addressed you, Captain. Have you no other?”

“Doesn’t use it, Your Majesty,” puts in Porthos helpfully.

“Doesn’t like it, Your Majesty,” adds Aramis (unhelpfully).

The Queen lays a conciliatory hand on her husband’s sleeve. “Captain Athos and his men will give us all cause to be proud, I am sure of it. It is only what we should expect of one of His Majesty's musketeers.”

“Indeed.” Mollified, the King steeples his fingers, regarding said musketeers over their manicured tips. “To that end, I have a task for you – for you four in particular.” He flicks his wrist towards the Earl of Portland, who executes a small leap on the spot like an anxious salmon. “Lord Weston is in need of an escort.”

“An escort, Your Majesty?”

He blinks. “To England.”

“England?”

“I should think _that_ would be obvious.” Louis bares his square teeth, evidently pleased to have one up on one of his subjects. “You will escort him back to London, and return with the new ambassador. His Grace is…a contentious choice, and his king has expressed a wish that he reach Paris in one piece.” The royal mouth pushes out in a childish pout. “Would that we could focus on Spain, and forget England altogether…but King Charles _will_ insist, so Henrietta Maria _will_ insist, so protect His Grace, you must.” He sighs. “In any case, you take ship from le Havre tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Weston’s throat bobs.

“Or sooner, my lord, if you miss England so terribly?”

“I…no, Your Majesty. Tomorrow will be…” But the honour of being addressed directly by Louis XIII of France is apparently overwhelming, and he lapses into silence.

“Tomorrow.” The steepled fingers tap lightly against the dimpled chin. “But now, I would speak to the new captain of my musketeers. In private.”

Athos raises his own chin. “Your Majesty.”

Weston, the Queen’s ladies, courtiers, clerks and all other sundry persons begin to chatter, then to process out of the side doors like animals exiting the ark. Her Majesty herself lingers, drifting over to one of the tall windows, winding one strand of bright hair around her finger as she goes. With a significant glance, d’Artagnan and Porthos take their leave, and Treville melts into an ornamental frieze (war is his business, and this is nothing like war). Aramis remains, as he will always remain if the Queen stays. Her hand ceases moving as soon as the room is empty, and she turns.

“You are sad, I think.”

“Your Majesty sees too much.”

“And yet, for all my majesty –” She smiles faintly, wryly. “I know too little of how best to be of assistance to you.”

“To me, Your Majesty?”

“To you. Aramis.” Her voice is gentle, her expression is gentle; she can only be gentleness itself, this woman, this queen. In all the time that’s passed, in all that’s passed between them, she has never changed (and so in his heart, he has never strayed). “You've come to my aid so many times, you – surely, if only to maintain a sense of balance, you must now call on me to lift your spirits. I would not have you sad,” she says sincerely. “I would not have you sad for all the world.”

“Do they tell you,” he wonders, moving no closer to her but reaching out for her with his dark eyes all the same. “The dignitaries who come here, your women, the King…they flatter you, I’ve seen them doing it, but do they tell you about yourself? Do they tell you about your kindness, Your Majesty?”

“It is not kindness, Aramis. Kindness has no object, and mine is to see you happy again.”

“Marguerite.” The name is like a heavy stone cast into a pond. There is the shock of the splash, and then there are the ripples. The Queen stays very still, letting them wash over her, but Aramis is not of so sanguine a humour. “I have a lot to atone for. If my happiness is the price, I will willingly pay it.” He was an honourable man, that was it: he was a libertine, but an honourable man, a champion of females as well as a seducer of the same. His passion was his glory, passion and glory each sought for their own sake, but that was not how it had been with Marguerite. His object had always been the Dauphin, his son, and passion can and should have but one object. Her death was on his conscience. Her life had proved that he was not an honourable man, not anymore.

“Her death was a tragedy. A wanton waste. Another stain on Rochefort’s soul which will assure him an eternity in Hell.” And Anne is gentle no longer, but hard. She is harder than the diamonds in her hair. “God forgive me, but I am glad he is dead.”

“The God I believe in would never condemn you, Your Majesty.”

“The God you believe in would not want you to blame yourself. I do not blame you, not for her death, not…not for loving her.” Her lower lip, like her pearls, quivers, and his hand closes around nothing because it cannot take hers.

“You saw too little if you thought I loved her, Majesty.”

“And is that what haunts you?”

The salt sea of what exists between them has dried Aramis’ throat, and she, in her small, soft way, has robbed him of eloquence.

“Yes.”

The Queen flows towards him, her silver skirts flooding over his feet. She puts her small, soft hands on either side of his face, gazes up at him with no question of being kissed. “Poor, gallant Aramis,” she murmurs, as she did once before. “We can make peace with the past, and pray for those who will forever be a part of it, and not a part of our present…but we cannot change it, no matter how we try. Trust your God. Obey your king. Who could ask for more?”

“Who could ever expect less of one of His Majesty’s musketeers?”

One corner of his mouth lifts, and one finger travels the length of the strand of hair which glowed gold in the light from the window. Her fair lashes flicker down.

“Who indeed?”

**.**

“With respect, Your Majesty, might you consider conscripting spies who are not _filles de France_?” Treville presses the broad pad of his thumb between his brows, knuckling away fatigue and intrigue.

“You mustn’t worry yourself over such irrelevances, Minister,” Louis says, assuaging. “Luckily for you, I have run out of sisters to conscript.”

“So _that_ is our true purpose in London.”

“It…no, no it is not.” The sulky expression reappears on the King’s face as swiftly as it vanished, and neither Treville nor Athos is pleased to make its acquaintance again. “Your purpose in London is just what I said, which is to escort the Duke and his retinue to Paris. Our spy reports that the only people who hate him more than the King's councillors are his own countrymen, but you must ensure he arrives in full possession of arms, legs, and head – though the head,” he points out petulantly. “Has precious little to recommend it.”

There is a great man somewhere inside Louis de Bourbon, and possibly a good man too. His absolute commitment to the war with Spain is a welcome surprise from a man who used to entertain himself by building toy armadas instead of fielding real ones. Athos, however, has his reservations. It is one thing for the King send the captain of what is essentially his vanguard on a mission abroad when all is well at home, but quite another to dispose of four of his finest in a time of war. There is every chance that the musketeers will be sent onto on the field leaderless, that any victory will be no victory of their captain’s, that any defeat will be utterly his doing (and undoing, come to that).

“I don’t like it.”

“You don’t have to like it, you have to go.” Treville nods at a passing guardsman as if that settles the matter. He is grateful Athos bided his time and curbed his tongue in the time between leaving the study and reaching the upper stairway, but that is all he is grateful for.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but we are at war.”

The Minister for War is in no mood for irony. “Correct me if _I’m_ wrong, Captain, but you swore a vow to devote your life to the service of your king, and the King requires you to escort Lord Weston back to England, and the King of England requires you to escort his favourite back. Like it or not, you, all four of you, are going to England.”

“And how exactly are we to divine which duke to protect?” Which is a question, not a surrender, or so they pretend. These two have similar gunflint eyes, similar manners of speaking around things. “His Majesty seemed to be doing his best to be enigmatic on that front.”

Treville rubs his forehead once more. “Buckingham,” he says tiredly. “Who else but Buckingham?”

**.**

Water should be clear. It should be crystalline, and run cold from fountains, and hot from silver pitchers. It should not be tinged grey, and leave smears on the windowpane. It should not bucket down from the sky for days on end, and confine the listless inhabitants of the Palace of Whitehall inside, draping themselves languorously over the nearest piece of furniture, licking the remains of cakes and wine off their own (or each other’s) fingers, playing bowls in the long gallery, if one somehow manages to break through the layer of indolence which hangs over the place like a pall.

Milady touches her tongue to her own teeth, tasting nothing at all. She watches the rain and thinks about nothing in particular, and calls nothing in particular to mind.

“ _Dégoûtant_.”

The Queen of England is tiny, doll-like, fragile. Her hair should be darker, and her smooth upper lip needs more of a Cupid’s bow to be anything like kissable. Her long arms unbalance her shorter torso, but she has her charms. She draws in her lips as if she might spit, continuing in French, “How can you bear this weather, Milady? You could return to France if you so wished, to a fresh, cleansing spring rain, to sunshine, to a break in these interminable clouds. Are you an imbecile? Do you enjoy being soaked to the skin or confined indoors?” She asks this without a hint of rancour, but with something bright in her large eyes. “Or is it His Grace that keeps you in England?”

“I am the Duke’s private secretary, Your Majesty.”

“You are the Duke’s whore, Madame,” the Queen replies. “Or you would be, if women were to his taste this month.” She flaps a white hand, indicating that it matters little to her either way. “I have come to share a secret with you, Milady de Winter. You may report it to His Grace, as you report all things to him, with my blessing.” When she takes a step forward, the hem of her goldfinch-coloured gown brushes the kingfisher of Milady’s, and the latter considers taking a step backward. It isn’t the power of the diminutive queen’s personality, but the oversweet scent of her breath, and her fleshy body, so at odds with the long limbs. “He is to be sent to France, to the court of my brother, to wait on him and serve my husband’s interests there. His Grace has always taken such pleasure in reminding me how much influence he has over Charles; let us see if the same can be said of Louis.” A dimple appears in her cheek, suggesting she has no idea just how malleable her brother truly is.

In his defence, he was caught at a weak moment. In hers, she’d have caught him even when he was at his best. The thought of King Louis, of the peal he had Rochefort ring over her head as she left the Louvre, turns Anne hot and white with shame. She remembers the weight of a leather purse in her hand: not enough and, at the same time, too much, more than she could ever accept. She is more ashamed of being seen to have nothing than having it, it would seem.

She is more ashamed of being seen, and not understood.

(She is yet more ashamed of being seen, and understood completely).

“I have no doubt His Grace will be a credit to whichever position of honour His Majesty chooses to assign him…next.” Milady sinks into a deep curtsey, yet remains the taller of the two. Both women are aware of this, and neither woman acknowledges it.

How many hours has she spent in the pursuit of men, and are they honestly worth the pursuing? Buckingham has rooms close to his king’s own, although the splendour of York House is nearby on the Strand. Here, he licenses the licentiousness which drew King James to him: the upholstery is a queer shade of blue-green silk, which stirs and shifts if one looks at it too long, and every piece of furniture that can have _honi soit qui mal y pense_ – the motto of the Order of the Garter, ‘shame on him who thinks it shameful’ – carved into it, has. The words curve serpentine around the legs of chairs and, in her occasional fits of superstition, Milady prefers to stand on the Turkish rug, as if its pattern of vines and flowers might hide her from the motto’s fangs. The Duke has no such qualms, preferring the chair in the centre of the floor (where he can hear opportunity knock, and bid the door open).

“You’re to go to France.” She moves to the window, reacquainting herself with the rain and what it absolutely does not call to mind. “Did you know?”

“Naturally.”

“Did you ask for the honour?”

“No.” The ever-moving mouth thins, though the remainder of his expression remains indifferent. They could be discussing the price of buttons. “And to be conveyed to the heart of a Catholic court like some kind of parcel would not necessarily be my desire, but it is Charles’ desire, so it must be my desire too.” He rises, coming to stand behind her. This simultaneously blocks off her escape and puts them into close contact – he is a strangely tactile creature, this duke, running one long finger up and down the first three crests of Milady’s spine. She senses no lust in the touch, which is even stranger. “It intrigues me to hear you say that I am to go to France, as if you are not to come with me.”

“Why?”

“Where I go, you go. Where I go to your homeland, to wait on a king you publicly bedded and who will most likely be discomfited by your presence, you go too.” He sighs, long and low, and the hand which has been stroking the back of her neck closes gently around it, squeezing rhythmically but so delicately that her breath still comes easily. “You will recall that I know everything about you now. You are in my power.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“While your talents as a speaker of French and a searcher out of secrets are of use to me, no. Blackmail, however, could not induce you to go anywhere you had no wish to go. You would wriggle your way out of this if you wanted to.”

“Then –”

Lifting the hand not currently occupied in play-pretend sadism, he lays it lightly on her décolleté. “How your heart is racing, Milady. Which is it, I wonder: the thought of the hanging, or the thought of the hangman?”

And she is Anne again, drained of tears and words, kept standing upright on the cart by bile and the sick, sweet knowledge that she will survive, and have revenge for the promise that was broken when Thomas d'Athos’ lies weighed heavier than her life. “The hangman was a blacksmith,” she answers. “A no one who meant nothing once he had served his purpose. He’s dead now.” She stares blindly into the storm, imagining each drop of rain as a sin, a life taken. There will be no more, but until there is another board and another game for women, she will serve the Duke of Buckingham, be his speaker of French and his searcher of secrets. There are other ways to atone, but none of them are in Paris. There is nothing for her in Paris.

“When I say the hangman, I mean the man who ordered you hanged.” He shakes her, just a little, fingers biting just a little into her throat. “I say that your hangman has been made captain of King Louis’ musketeers, and that even now, he is on his way to London. _Ah_.” Buckingham turns her head from side to side, a 'no' in deed rather than word. “Fear not, Milady de Winter. I have something in mind that will ensure your heart becomes as cold as the rest of you.”

“What?” She demands, suddenly exasperated with his appetite for drama. “What could you possibly do? And could it involve you behaving towards me other than as you would towards a cat, or a whore, or digging up ancient history like some vile resurrectionist?”

“Marriage,” he responds, and releases her. “I shall divorce my wife, and marry you, and then you will be Her Grace, the Duchess of Buckingham, and if any man treats you like a cat, or a whore, you will be well placed to deal with him.”

Milady turns, her green eyes emerald in a face alight with interest. Still, she braces herself on the sill behind her. He is a strange creature indeed, this duke, one she is not fool enough to trust (but she is not fool enough to trust herself in Paris yet, and she is eminently more dangerous than he could ever be). “You don’t love me.”

“The former mistress of a king is a valuable commodity. Love is not.”

“So you want to use me to shame the King.”

But she would walk through shit no longer.

(But she would fear Athos no longer).


	3. The Hangman

It comes as no surprise to any of the travellers (Jerome Weston, second Earl of Portland included) that the weather for their crossing sets foul, and remains so all the way to England. This, strangely, seems to be to Porthos’ taste: he spends much of the journey on deck, being smacked in the face by waves and growing crusty with salt. “It’s not as if he’s every really travelled,” Aramis points out, but stays below himself, writing bad poetry and earnestly asking Lord Weston’s opinion on it. The earl’s upper lip, with its three fine yellow hairs, spasms each and every time this occurs. A newly minted writer of bad poetry himself, as newly married men often are, d’Artagnan is amused; Athos, however, is not. Aramis has wit, to be sure, but it isn’t like him to clown. He wouldn’t be capering if all was well.

“He’s not happy.”

“Course he’s not.” Porthos has been chewing on the same piece of ship’s biscuit for a quarter of an hour, displaying as much relish now as he did when he first put it in his mouth. “He did wrong by Marguerite, and now she’s dead, so he tried to become a monk, but we brought him homr, and then there’s the little matter of how he has to bow to the woman he said he would love if she were free to be loved by him, and not see his son for weeks at a time. Course he’s not happy.”

“What do we do?”

“I’m not the one to ask about dead women and drinking too much.” A wry black eye rolls towards Athos, who lowers the brim of his hat, but otherwise accepts the jibe. It’s this weather, he decides – he wouldn’t be dwelling on it but for this weather, with rain pelting down and wind screeching through the rigging. He would forget he’d ever had conversations about the weather in England which had nothing whatsoever to do with the weather in England, and everything to do with the fact that England was across the sea from France, and may as well be another world. He swallows. He could be in Madrid, Paris or London, and that which he has no intention of searching for would refuse to be found unless she wanted to be.

His friend is quiet, and that gives him time to dwell, to sketch her shape in the air and tighten his jaw against the warmth of remembered flesh, the memory as blistering as if it hasn’t been months since he touched her last. The cold air nips at his cheek, and he’s glad of the interruption.

“You’re always drinking too much,” he observes, once the flash of heat and the ache has passed. What’s done is done (or tucked into his shirt for safekeeping, at least).

“And you’re about as cheerful as Aramis.”

Their fourth limb vacillates between customary good humour and recently developed wistfulness. Ostensibly to keep watch over the silently shaking or violently puking Weston, d’Artagnan sits at a desk in His Lordship’s cabin and writes everything down for Constance. She’d adjusted the strap of his pauldron – his pride, his joy, his fleur-de-lis – and brushed the hair back from his temples. “Watch out,” she said, with half a smile. “Looks like that, the English ladies will be all over you like a rash.”

“I’ll tell them I’m married, then.”

“And faithful,” she added, bumping him with her hip as she moved back around the table to deposit a now mended shirt on top of the pile of clean laundry. “You can be married and faithless, you know…well, _you_ can’t.”

“I could get ‘Property of Madame d’Artagnan’ on the other shoulder, if you’d like.”

“Idiot.” And then she’d kissed him.

For too long, d’Artagnan could only dream of kissing Constance Bonacieux, of taking her to bed and lying with her head pillowed on his arm. Now, they’re married, and he’s entitled by law to kiss her whenever he wants (providing the lady in question is willing), but is separated from her by the boards of a ship and by the miles of distance between two countries and by the queasy stomach of a nobleman. Still, he writes everything down for her, even the parts she won’t be interested in hearing. It might make a novel one day, if nothing else.

**.**

_Which is it, I wonder: the thought of the hanging, or the thought of the hangman?_

What can the Duke of Buckingham know about hanging? What could anyone know who hadn’t been privy to the swoop in the belly as the cart rolls away, and the drop, and the vain hope that it won’t hurt, because for a moment, it doesn’t. He couldn’t even conceive of the gagging pressure which makes the eyes goggle and saliva rush up, spill over. Then comes the kicking, and then the desperate thumping of bound hands against backside, fingernails tearing bloody hell out of swollen palms, reaching for the impossible, for a reprieve.

In her dreams, she’s still choking on the end of that rope.

Milady studies her face in the looking glass, pulls the clear skin taut over fine bones. You could never tell, unless you had already been told. Unless you had seen the scar, you would consider the yellow ribbon a French affectation.

Unless you were a musketeer, you would never even suspect.

She moves like a different manner of dream through the corridors of Whitehall, a glimpse of something beautiful which is gone when whoever catches sight of her tries to look again. Her skirts rustle, and her heels tap, but otherwise she leaves no trace of her presence, addresses no one, smiles at no one (some habits are hard to break). Is it, she wonders, the thought of the hanging, or the thought of the hangman – but her gown is dry beneath the arms, and the double loop of pearls around her wrist don’t chatter, so she most certainly isn’t shaking. She is, as it happens, composed, and long may it last. She has, after all, been privy to the swoop in the belly, and the drop, and the vain hope that love will conquer all even as love turned its head and rode away. She has nothing to fear from Lord Weston’s escort.

Her yellow ribbon has three yellow diamonds stitched into it, and two more set in yellow gold in her earrings. She has nothing to fear from _anyone_.

“You will come back,” the King says anxiously, plucking at the Duke’s sleeve like a child. “You went before, to do my father’s work, and you came back then.” Then suddenly, as if someone has whispered in his ear that he has an audience, he draws back, assuming an expression of hauteur which will make his subjects hate him soon enough. It’s only to compensate for his stutter, but a king is not a mortal man, and only mortal men stutter. To Milady’s mind, he is very much a mortal man, as all men are mortal men; she holds no truck with the divine right of kings. Who would ever fall on their knees in honest-to-God rapture before a man who is halfway to being as in love with Buckingham as his father was?

“I will come back, Your Majesty. Count upon it.” Buckingham bows low, neatly rescuing the exquisite embroidery on his peacock blue sleeve from Charles’ clinging fingers. “But you must greet the Earl of Portland graciously, and bid me farewell.”

The Earl of Portland is Jerome Weston, who suffers from seasickness and a nervous disposition. He orders game birds and manchet bread with salt when he comes to court, but is too timorous to complain about how overcooked the meat is – but then, all the meat in England is overcooked, and the English appear to prefer it like that. He is blond, and his parents are fifth cousins. All this, Milady has learned, gleaned from gossip and public record, as if it might prepare her for the sight of him (she is nothing if not a forward-thinker). She has imagined his steps across the gleaming floorboards, mapped out in her mind the duration of the pause that will follow him before his escort does. She has added the sound a man’s boots make when he is walking at a discreet distance, varying dependent on his stride. Her knowledge at this point verges on prophetic, but even that won’t protect her against the reality of the man she once loved.

Addressing no one, smiling at no one, she picks up her skirts.

Aramis seems as stunned to see Anne as she is to see him (because she is the wrong Anne, perhaps). He’d taken up a position in the hallway, watching backs and eyeballing latecomers.

“You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

“You should be a ghost,” he replies. “Several times over, as a matter of fact.”

“Musketeers,” she pronounces drily. “Always so charming.”

“Were you running, Milady?” His appealing features are unusually sombre, though not on her account. The line between his brows has been there too long to be simply on her account. “That’s not like you.”

“Not dead, and avoiding confrontation…how I must confuse you, Monsieur Aramis.”

Instead of responding, he leans back against the wall in apparentagreement. She notes that his hair is longer, that he shaves less frequently, and that is he torturing himself because no one else will do anything but absolve him. She recognises the symptoms.

“I won’t tell him I saw you. I doubt that’s in either of your interests.”

Always so charming, these musketeers, and always at least two steps behind.

“It’s too late for that.”

He puts his head on one side, hinting at curiosity for the first time in their conversation. “You swore he would never see you again.”

“I always break my promises,” she says bitterly. “Ask Athos.”

She recognises the symptoms of Aramis’ disease, of course, because they are the symptoms of hers. They both have innocent blood on their hands, and that blood somehow wipes out the righteous stains where they dispatched the guilty to Hell. His friends were surely quick to forgive him for the death of the nursemaid and the stain on the Queen’s honour, as quick as Buckingham would be to excuse her were she to commit another murder or two. She has developed an interest in innocence, though, and it is Aramis’ fault. She has begun to believe that those who cross her may not necessarily be destined to die (if they were, Aramis himself would never have survived chastising her for her cold blood in the first place).

“What don’t we know?” He asks.

For an instant, she considers telling him. It would be kinder to lay it all out, the truth of the Duke’s loveless petting and bottomless purse, about Katherine Manners and the end of her tenure as Duchess of Buckingham, about the ice in heart when she’d ordered the coachman to leave too soon, choosing that time to hang herself rather than to wait and be let down again, again, again. They would be forewarned and forearmed against her, more so than she deserves. Milady is well aware of how she appears, particularly with regards to men: she’s a tiger, or a panther, or some equally exotic thing whose teeth should be feared. Still, they come close to the bars of her cage, and still, they try to tame her. If they were warned that she was readying herself to destroy a virtuous woman’s spotless reputation with a messy divorce, if they were armed against another patron who spent a king’s ransom on dyed ostrich feathers and only seemed stupid for the first five minutes of acquaintance…

…and she’s been trying to pull her teeth for a while now, but there’s a part of her that still has claws.

“I take my chocolate before ten,” she tells him blandly, arching an eyebrow. “And if your captain’s interests mattered half as much to you as playing the tormented hero of this sad little tableau, you never would have allowed him to come here. _Nothing_.” Arranging her thick braid over one shoulder, straightening her sleeves, Milady smiles – and it is Milady who smiles, Anne who withdraws behind the clear skin, the fine bones. “You know nothing about what you’ve gotten yourselves into.”

“Who told you Athos was made captain?”

But for all her bad intentions, it is Anne who answers.

“It’s Athos.”

**.**

“What are you supposed to put in a love letter?”

Porthos, who is engaged in shaving the daintiest slices of cheese imaginable off the whole, pauses to stab one with the point of his knife. “Metaphors,” he advises. “And then if she doesn’t like what you wrote, you can say you didn’t mean what she thought you meant – oh, and blacked out lines for the really nasty parts.” He nibbles at the cheese with comic delicacy, but d'Artagnan doesn't laugh.

“You’re suggesting I write that sort of love letter? To my _wife_?”

They three are seated before the fire, and although the waterfront tavern is as dirty and smoky as any in Paris, the beds are clean and the food is good. They three become four as Athos emerges out of the crowd, bearing two dark bottles and yet more cheese. Porthos beams.

“What are we talking about?”

Aramis, who has been sinking lower and lower in his seat with every passing moment, rouses himself enough to reply. “Monsieur d’Artagnan,” he explains, gesturing with one hand to their young friend. “Is attempting to write a love letter to Madame d’Artagnan, as if she didn’t receive enough letters from him already.” He even helps himself to a slice of beef, running a piece of bread around his place to sop up the gravy, which is promising. There’s nothing like romance to draw a man with better aim than Cupid out of himself. “Athos, my esteemed captain.” Aramis claps him on the shoulder, and his esteemed captain realises that, while romance may have played its part in bringing him to life, so too has alcohol. “You’re a man of the world.”

“No more than the two of you.”

“What would you say?” The dark eyes are bright with challenge (alcohol has played more than its part, that much is obvious). “If you were in his place. What would you tell her?”

It’s better, surely, to play the game and not to mention the uncharacteristic intoxication. Drunk and maudlin is usually Athos’ hallmark, but he’s more than willing to give it up for the evening. Instead, he pushes the brandy towards the centre of the table, taking a seat with his back to the flames. “You should tell her that though you lack time to think about her during the day, and though you may be far away from her more often than either of you would like, she’s always there, in the back of your mind, the last thought you have before you close your eyes at night. You think about her before you sleep, you’ll think about her before you die. Her name will be the last word you ever speak.” He himself has a weary sort of certainty about his own final moments, be they on the battlefield or in his bed (he will think of Pinon, and the long grass in the high field, and until then, he will think no more upon it).

Shrugging, breaking the moment, he nudges Aramis. “Well?”

“You hope.” To begin with, he speaks slowly, but gathers momentum as he warms to the topic, as some of the colour returns to his face. “You hope all the time, about the most irrational things: that she’ll be standing behind the next door you walk through, that she’ll be the woman whose dress or hair colour catches your eye.” His upper lip lifts, but only on the left side, and he smiles crookedly. “That’s why men are unfaithful even to women they love – not that you should be, or that you should imply to Constance you ever might be – that’s why we do it, though. Every women is her, that woman, if you’re drunk enough, if you try hard enough.” He stares into his cup as if the liquid may have undergone the alchemical change to gold without his noticing, then shakes his head, rallying with a wink which gives his friends hope that there may be hope for him after all. “Porthos?”

Porthos pauses only briefly in his attack on the cheese. “Tell her your mother would have been proud to have her as a daughter.”

Three of them are meant to be free, but two of them were bound willingly once (and chains can be forged into bone, and those are hardest to break).

The Duke of Buckingham’s carriage is more in the style of his private closet than his more public rooms at the palace, but there’s still no question as to whose carriage it is as it rattles up to the quayside. The four musketeers are ready, as they have been for well over an hour; His Grace is late, and his army of private guards will escort him this far, but no further. The carriage, with the Villiers crest brightly painted and boldly outlined in black on its side, is returning to London with them too.

“Milady.” His Grace gestures that she should exit first. Milady doubts this has anything to do with good manners, but does as she is bid.

Athos has the privilege of having her all but tumble into his arms. The perfume of the past is almost more of an assault than the person, than watered grey satin like the sky overhead, with the sudden snap of those eyes and suddenness of touching her. When she soldiered for Richelieu, she wore jasmine, but now she smells like herself again: like lavender soap and linen, like a dab of orange flower water between her breasts (perfuming her chemise without having any effect whatsoever on the natural musk of her skin). She braces her gloved hands against his chest, ignorant of the other glove beneath his coat. Now he scents her, and feels lust like a slap.

And anger, and agony, pain and pleasure.

Anne may as well be made of memories, not flesh, and she watches him struggle without a word.

“I told you.” And because she sees only Aramis, she addresses only Aramis. The arm that encircles her waist, keeping her steady, belongs to a ghost – that’s how it has to be. “I always break my promises.”

“Gentlemen.” The Duke makes a much more elegant descent to the cobbles, inclining his head to the coachman who springs forward to offer assistance to Buckingham but who was conspicuous by his lack of gallantry mere moments before. “I gather you’re acquainted with my private secretary, Milady de Winter?” His teeth are well cared for and evenly spaced, and for Buckingham to bare them in a smile is a rare thing. “I have no doubt you’ll afford her every courtesy due to the future Duchess of Buckingham.”

D’Artagnan is the only one to catch the slight flicker of her lashes at her future husband's presumption, which matters little to him, as he cares the least. He’s buried himself in that body before and, in the cold light of Constance (not that Constance is by any means cold, but she does provide a certain sense of clarity), decides the Duke may well be the victim here.

“Has the current Duchess of Buckingham been informed?” Athos enquires, although his tone has no inflection to indicate he has any interest in the answer. It’s a good thing that he is what he is, a captain, because any ordinary man faced with this particular ordinary woman would be snarling and spitting and hard for her after an instant of contact. He’s not a man, though. “Or are you planning on one wife for everyday use, and one for state occasions?”

He’s a musketeer.

(A musketeer who will very shortly be getting very drunk).

“Your insolence is not appreciated.” But noted, as even three dyed ostrich plumes on his hat cannot make George Villiers a fool. “Nor are your presumably forthcoming opinions on bigamy.” His gaze slides across to Milady, who is even less of a fool than he is.

_Which is it, I wonder: the thought of the hanging, or the thought of the hangman?_

At times, she can look upon love quite calmly. At others, she rocks herself to sleep to the echo of his voice, soothing herself after dreams of death where it was he who killed her, the captain of His Majesty’s musketeers, Olivier d’Athos, Comte de la Fère. He didn’t come, she reminds herself, and nor did he drag her back. Desire remains, the animal attraction which drew them to one another from the first, but any bitch in heat can feel desire. She is Anne de Breuil, Milady de Winter, future Duchess of Buckingham, a woman with more resurrections under her belt than Jesus Christ.

She drops her shoulders, aware of the creamy swell of cleavage above the neckline of her gown, safe in her beauty, stronger in herself than any urge any man could ever awaken in her.

“The captain would enjoy bigamy, were he to try it.” And she does look at him, and through him, and she does want him, but what of that? “I'm told misery loves company.”


	4. The Invalid

“Why?”

England is behind them. France lies ahead. She’s been waiting for him to ask, for him to say anything (she’s waited until this very moment to decide how to answer). The foam on the surface of the sea is an oily yellow, bile-coloured, and the ship rises and falls gently on its swell.

“How much higher could I hope to climb?” The rail is warm in the late afternoon sunshine, and as Anne plants her elbows on it, leaning forward, the small humps of her spine stretch out and shiver. “Buckingham is second only to King Charles himself, he has more money than that milksop wife of his could spend in a thousand years…or did you want to know about love?” She half-turns her head, propping her chin on her own shoulder. “Love has done its best to damn us, don’t you agree? You spent the best years of your life with your head in a bucket, and now your friend Aramis is rotting like a corpse in summer, riddled with love, with the pain only love can bring.” Pursing lips pinched into bloody redness, she adds, “But I am neither dead nor in love, so perhaps I’m the winner of whatever this is.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

They’ll reach Le Havre the day after tomorrow if they can keep this speed up, otherwise Athos wouldn’t be on deck. His will is weak, and wine tastes tart and black in the gloom of his cabin, but he shows no signs of missing it. He stares directly into the sun, which is beyond her, bleeding down into the sea.

“Because I want to be happy,” she says shortly. “And money and power seem to make other people happy, and because I would marry La Barbe Bleue rather than be poor and pathetic again.” Unconsciously, she reaches up to her throat; self-consciously, she lets her hand fall, hang in the air over the side of the ship. “Because I told you I was tired of people trying to hang me, and I am, and because surely even a person as unsubtle as you can understand I meant being hurt, and being the plaything of others, and not just being strung up from the branch of a tree.”

“Then this is one poor decision you can’t lay at my door.” He lifts his chin, averting his gaze from the angle of her neck when she looks at him like that (and she does look at him like that, like a cat).

“To the first of many.” Still looking, Milady raises an imaginary cup. She lowers it, imagining the raw burn of cheap alcohol, and another time, and another life. “You rushed to the Queen’s side, did you not, the night Rochefort had the misfortune to lose his eye?” There is no warmth in the air now, and when she glides across the boards towards him, he lacks either sun or drink to blind or numb him. It’s twilight, a between time, and his heartbeats are slow and sticky under her glove. “You saw it,” she murmurs, almost as if she envies him. “You saw her face. He would have raped her, she must have been utterly convinced of that to do what she did. What did you see, Athos, when you looked into her face? Which was more important to the most noble of musketeers, the blood on her hands, or the look in her eyes?”

But he cannot, or will not say.

“Coward,” she breathes, and turns her back on him.

She quits the deck entirely, heading for the sanctuary of Buckingham’s cabin (there, the future takes precedence, and not the past). Without knocking, she enters and, without asking, she pours herself a glass of wine. It has a rich, sour flavour, and leaves purplish stains on the blue Venetian glass. It does nothing for her, but allows her to be silent for longer than her employer would otherwise deem acceptable.

The Duke is seated at a chessboard, playing himself. The figures are red and white stone, and the board is composed of squares of the same. His slanting brows and equally slanted cheekbones form two parallel lines of shadow, though his forehead remains smooth. Only his lowered lids suggest the object of his focus – he sits as straight on sea as he does on dry land, but with a fluidity which whispers to Milady of hot Mediterranean blood every time she notices it. She wonders how he sits a horse.

“You know everything, therefore you know me too well to believe I would swallow your story about humiliating Louis.” She places the tip of her finger on the red king, wobbling the little man irritatingly from side-to-side. “I am not whatever the equivalent of a musketeer is for an English duke, I am not replaceable. I don’t object to you getting whatever pleasure you do get from using to me to bait my beloved husband, but you would do well not to treat me like a woman, Your Grace, and keep me in the dark because you doubt my feeble mind has the capacity for your scheming. My brains won’t fall out for lack of space.” Though she is a woman, thank God, and as such not to his taste this season. She is a woman, and unashamed of it, and would never cast off her sex like some she could mention.

The Duke offers up a wry glance (wry for a heartbeat before he himself takes on the semblance of a chess piece, face milder for the machinations going on behind it). “Observe the board, Milady.”

She does.

“Which piece would you move next?”

She selects his queen’s side bishop.

“And after that?”

She taps a pawn.

“And after that?”

“I don’t know. I won’t know until the other side moves.”

“Precisely.” He doesn’t relax in his chair, but seems somehow to occupy it more comfortably. This is a man whose backbone has probably never made contact with a backrest. “I have told you what moves I plan to make – travelling to France, presenting you to the King as my bride-to-be – and then we shall see who the other side is, and what moves they make in return. There is of course a greater game here, and a greater end, but not one you need to be privy to. Am I privy to why you do what you do?” Buckingham rises slightly out of his seat, taking her chin between thumb and forefinger. His skin is as cold and translucent as hers. “No. We move separately, or we move together, but our moves are still dependent on the other players in the game.”

“Then why Athos? You knew he'd been made captain. Minor military appointments would never have reached your ears if you hadn’t already been listening.”

“Because he is, by all accounts, incorruptible.” Releasing her, he lowers himself back into his chair, back into the game. “Because you, Milady, are a succubus, and you, Milady, were loved by a man who is famously honourable. Because he interests me.” He aims a flick at the small white figure of the knight. “He interests me quite as much as you do.”

**.**

They come together in the evenings, a primal habit of creatures who once clustered together around fire pits and ate each other over petty insults. They gather on the berth deck, and the Duke sits off to one side, and Milady usually commits herself to catlike indifference to the men who surround her. Not tonight, however: whether Athos or Buckingham is to blame for her sudden animation, her gaze is green glass, phosphorescent Saint Elmo’s Fire, and she slides a deck of cards out of her sleeve.

“Don’t fall over one another in the rush to partner me, will you.”

Porthos begins to rise, black curls curling tighter after being drenched with sea spray; Aramis lays a warning hand on his friend’s sleeve. “Porthos.”

“What?”

“Think about what you’re doing.”

He doesn’t doubt his friend’s intellect, just his heart. His lack of shrewdness, when he does lack it, is out of a desire to trust. Some piece of it has decided Milady’s only purpose is a game of cards, and he trusts it. Aramis is more wary of her fevered appearance this evening, and the rich colour of her blush. She is in motion, and yet she is absolutely still. The neat lace pattern of pearls around her throat barely moves as she breathes, swallows. The lamplight gilds one side of her. “I’m not proposing to steal his soul,” she snaps. “Just his money. Monsieur Porthos.” She tilts her head slowly to one side, an invitation. “Do you speak for yourself, or does your direputable friend speak for you?”

“You’re a fine one to use words like ‘disreputable’,” he replies. “But I’ll play. Stakes?”

The room was already quiet, but grows silent as she cuts, he deals, and they take one trick apiece. The moon is high and pocked, and its silvery light clashes with the golden glow of the candles.

Aramis tries to curl back up in the blackness of his thoughts, but finds himself incapable. Because of him, a good woman is dead, and another woman – the best, the brightest, the centre of the universe in more ways than one – has his son in her keeping, and even she has to steal time to be with him. He remembers Anne’s sweet, rounded mouth, comforting him after Isabelle, then again after Marguerite. How many more? How long until she too – but he is distracted by the game, by the change in Milady when she is aware she is being watched. He caught her off-guard at Whitehall, and she would have revealed more than she meant to if he hadn’t known all along she’d saved him for Athos’ sake, not his own. Here she is, at the centre of their universe (for this voyage, at least), and her armour is thick, and the Duke of Buckingham studies her with faint grooves in his cleanly shaven cheeks.

He cuts, she deals, she wins.

She cuts, he deals, she wins.

Does she consider herself faithful? Is that the way of it? Their encounter aside, d’Artagnan is acquainted with the trail of dead or bloodied or, at the very least, bruised men this woman leaves in her wake – but did she ever love any of them? Has she ever loved? Is she wrecked inside, as wrecked as the nobleman's son who knelt in the grass and burned along with his house for her? Does she love Buckingham? Is she able to love? Perhaps if they weren’t made of such different elements, him fiery and hot-headed and working on it in spite of his youth, and her, icy, deliberate (though ice can melt flesh as easily as fire). He doesn’t like complications, not d’Artagnan. He likes the simplest route from point A to point B, and he is reckless with his particular variety of male prettiness, and he has never been wrecked inside, so he spits out a spot of ink from an absent-mindedly sucked quill and goes back to his letter.

Milady takes the final trick without speaking, smiles at the turned down corners of Porthos’ lips.

“Beginner’s luck,” she offers.

“You’ve cleared me out.”

“Unbelievably fortunate beginner’s luck, then.” Success has flushed her nearly to the shade of claret.

“Right.”

“Thank you for the pleasure of your company, Porthos du Vallon.” She’d swept the pot, his stake and hers, into a small purse – now, she tosses it to him, and he snatches it out of the air with a frown between his heavy brows. “For your trouble,” she explains. “You were presumably put off your game by my wickedness, and the desire to cross yourself every time I made a play.” Turning to the Duke, she curtsies. His Grace has something on his mind, and merely waves her away without the _pro forma_ endearments his tongue is teaching itself to shape but his look still neglects to endorse.

(She’s an excellent actress, but she doesn’t always deserve applause).

 _Too hot_. Anne braces one hand on the wall as she moves through the _Gabrielle_ , searching for the door to her cabin without really seeing the stained wood panelling which surrounds her on two sides. _Much too hot_. The ship has slowed, but she’s still rocking on the tide, swaying dizzily from one side of the corridor to the other. _Can’t breathe_. A splinter digs into her palm, a mark of shoddy workmanship which barely even stings. _I can’t breathe_. Her fingers fumble over and slip off the clasp of her choker.

“Let me.”

“I can’t –”

“Stop thrashing and let me help you.”

It’s Aramis, the unexpected solidity of Aramis behind her, Aramis holding her up. She’s heavier than he anticipates, slumping against him, breathing shallowly as she rises and falls on currents of sickness, or drunkenness, or both. She’s no slip of a thing in a crown that weighs quite as much as her delicate bones do, but she still feels fragile.

He has no more luck with the clasp.

“Break it,” she hisses, finally. “That can’t be beyond your capabilities, can it?”

The necklace explodes in a shower of pearls, bouncing off the walls, littering the floor, glittering as they are quickly caught up in and as quickly released from the folds of her gown. She sucks in as deep a breath as she can, laces permitting, the scar on her throat even angrier against such rosy skin. It’s his first time seeing it at close quarters, and Aramis feels a sense of pity it will never be his place to feel. First, as a man, as a protector of women, he pities her for the agony of almost execution; second, as a man, as a connoisseur of women, he pities her for the crooked line that will never be straight, that will never be smooth, that will never be lovely again.

“I am not ill. I am _never_ ill.”

“You’re ill now,” he returns, with a breath of amusement. “Where’s your maid?”

“At this time? Halfway up a sailor, I shouldn’t wonder…must you tense up like that, as if I were summoning Satan rather than making a poor jest?” Her eyes, still huge, still burning, still too bright, roll. He sees it over her shoulder. “I’m reliably informed that I am a liar, and a whore, and a murderer, among other things which make less entertaining tittle-tattle. Lewdness of speech is the least of your problems, I assure you…to begin with, men who take me in their arms in unlit corridors have a habit of dying horribly.”

“As killing me would require you to be able to stand upright, I’ll take my chances.”

“ _Chivalry_ ,” says Anne, in tones of the deepest disgust. “God preserve me from men with notions of chivalry.”

**.**

“A passing fever. Bad food. Not enough air.”

“Too much air.”

“She’s a woman, not an uncorked Bordeaux.”

Porthos, succeeding in the task of removing his left boot, responds to the rebuke with a groan of pleasure.

“It could be anything. The best thing for her is rest, which is what I told His Grace. He sniffed, which I took to mean he accepted my assessment, and said a doctor could always be found in Le Havre if she’s not better by the time we make port.” Aramis had at last decided to leave the English maid where she was, and borne Milady to her berth himself. There, he respectfully stripped her of gown, shoes, stockings and stays, and she was as disrespectful as she could feasibly be while drifting in and out of consciousness. Her pupils were black, perfectly round, and so large that he seemed to swim in them each time he met her gaze.

“Leaving us to wonder what manner of game Milady is playing.”

Athos turns slowly, resting his chin on his shoulder. “What do you mean?”

“Can’t you see?” D’Artagnan is sitting in his shirt, legs swinging off the edge of his berth. It’s his cabin they’ve gathered in, the one with the largest porthole, but the serenity of the sea outside doesn’t detract from the edge in his voice. “First she pays Porthos for playing cards with her, then she conveniently swoons right where Aramis is ready to catch her **-** ”

“She seemed rather determined not to swoon, actually.”

“Stubborn.” Porthos grins appreciatively.

“What is _wrong_ with you?” His feet make twin thuds on the boards as he stands, scanning one face and then another, brandy-coloured eyes gone cloudy with disbelief. “This isn’t any woman, it’s Milady! Milady, who out-and-out asked me to kill Athos the first time I met her!” (For such is d’Artagnan’s recollection, viewed through a more honourable lens). “Milady, who killed his brother, and seduced the King, and nearly got the Comtesse de Larroque burnt at the stake with her lies! Milady, who would have, who almost did kill Constance! Why are you defending her? Why are you playing cards with her? Why, when our mission is to convey the Duke to Paris – and that’s it, those are our orders – are you acting like – like –”

“Like she’s a sick woman. A woman in need of diversion. In short, a living woman.” The lengthening shadows catch Athos’ expression at an angle, making it appear darker than it is (or maybe it just is, and maybe his hatred for her gathers there like the clouds of an oncoming storm). “You know I would be the last person to defend her, d’Artagnan, but she _is_ a living woman, and before she left France, she did help us. She even helped us rescue Constance, if only by association.”

“She rescued Aramis,” Porthos puts in, folding his arms. “She didn’t have to do that. Captain Treville didn’t promise to pay her to do that.”

Of they four, Porthos has had the least to do with Milady de Winter, which may be why he’s more willing to make allowances. It may also be that, unlike Aramis, he doesn’t forget: he doesn’t forget that he’s gone to bed for money before, albeit it by a more indirect route than a purse on the table after the deed is done. He also remembers a world apart from that of the musketeers, of the court, even of Constance Bonacieux and her starched white tablecloths. He remembers a world where women do whatever has to be done in exchange for bread and a bed and an unspoken promise that tomorrow will be better. He was a part of that world once, and that world remains a part of him…and when that world is a part of you, you let the gull take the first trick and let it make them cocky, but you never, _never_ hand over your winnings to them at the end of the night because the fun of it was in fleecing them.

So Porthos doesn’t condemn, because he doesn’t forget.

He never forgets what might have been.

By contrast, Aramis speaks low, and speaks calmly, but his words carry weight. “It must have been a wrench.” He addresses Athos, a man carved from marble, or something less yielding, and he thinks on the scar that buried a wife and birthed a fury. “Watching her hang.”

“Rather more of a wrench for her,” is his reply, low, and calm, and slightly sardonic. He’ll be drunk soon, of that none of them has any doubt. “Being hanged.” And perhaps he’ll stumble past her door tonight, and perhaps he won’t. Perhaps he’ll recall what near violation looks like, that even does will fight like dogs when they are threatened with it.

For now, he tips his head back, and the soft sound when it hits the wall numbs everything for a brief, blessed moment.


	5. The Goodwife

_You are a good man. I could never tell you to your face that you are a good man, as you would mock me or worse, say nothing at all, which is what you do because you believe anyone who thinks well of you is wrong. Is that likely? That Treville is wrong, and I am wrong, and Porthos and Aramis and d’Artagnan are wrong? We all think well of you – better than you deserve, sometimes (but not often)._

_Do not trouble yourself to give_ _him my love, if you were considering it. I sent it in a letter he will receive when you arrive in France. Write me how he looks when he reads it._

_Things were very quiet before there were musketeers appearing from behind every item of furniture. I blamed d’Artagnan for the inconvenience, but I do not forget you were the first. I do try to forget the vomit stains on my best dress, but meeting you was (mostly) worth the trouble with Bonacieux. I admire you above all other men, my husband excepted, and hope you consider me a true friend. If so, trust me to be true and truthful: you are a good man, Athos, and the regiment could have no better captain._

_Que Dieu vous bénisse et vous garde._

_Your friend,_

_Constance d’Artagnan_

Athos has read this letter five times, it having preceded him to England. It’s a tactful response to a conversation he ought not to have had, but there are only so many variations of _the cat cat cat sat sat sat on the mat mat mat_ before the gaze turns inexorably inwards. Is he ready? Will he ever be ready for the weight of such responsibility, he, a man who first neglected his obligations as a lord, then threw off the mantle altogether?

“You’re taking on too much, that’s why you’re writing nonsense about cats.” Constance clicked her tongue against her teeth and, rather too casually, used the dregs of his wine to extinguish the fire.

“That was –”

“Gone sour.” She shook out the final drops, forestalling him. “You must try not to be so tragic, Captain, when there’s nothing to be tragic about. Rochefort is dead, and the Queen is well, and Aramis is being very reasonable about breaking his vow of silence…” Her blue eyes were cheerfully keen, like a bird’s. She’s like a bird herself, Constance, flitting from task to task, taking an interest in everything.

And there sat Athos, hunched over his desk like a great bearded vulture.

“I don’t understand.” And he didn’t, and his confession clanged against her cheer like the clapper of a bell. “I cannot comprehend why Treville would give me this position, knowing –” Knowing what he knows, that Athos is not a good man, that he is not a man who can be chained to a desk, that he is a man who has to ride hard into the future (if only to forget the past). “He knows I’m all but incapable.”

“I don’t,” she said stoutly.

“I’m a drunk.”

“Yes.”

“And a fool.”

“And the best swordsman in the regiment, which means the best swordsman in France, and a brave soldier, and a loyal friend, and a wit, when the mood strikes you.” She wasn’t made for despair, Constance d’Artagnan. She has had her heart broken, and her honour taken, and her life put on the line, but these things she has swallowed, and so these things are better forgotten. She lives her life facing forward, and Athos his facing backward, so together they form a Janus of existence. “I’m not going to waste my breath enumerating your virtues – those precious few you _do_ have, since you and I both know you wouldn’t listen if I did.” She paused in her ministrations, straightening up the room, sliding her thumb down the blunt blade of a dagger, a pretty piece, an antique. She bit her lip but let it spring back almost immediately, full and pink. “Milady is gone, then.”

“Yes.”

“And not likely to come back.”

“No.”

“Then that was her choice.” Constance slipped the knife into her sleeve, meaning to take a whetstone to it if no more feminine duties presented themselves (or if they did). “And all the choices she made before that, those were hers too. If you shoulder her sins as well as your own, you’ll break your back. Give her some credit, and yourself some peace.”

But how can he be at peace ? How, as he lies on his berth, wide awake and stone cold sober, can he be anything _but_ tragic?

Athos draws out the pale blue glove from its nightly resting place, damns himself for keeping it so close. It’s sentimentality, pure and stupid, and it’s ensured not even a trace of her scent remains on the leather. He has nothing to breathe in, nothing to groan aloud into when the need presents itself, when he feels as if he might split his skin. Tonight, it seems as though there’s nothing to breathe at all, as if the night has filled its lungs and sucked the world into stillness.

In Paris there are brothels, and sometimes he stands outside their doors to watch the comings and goings of the young men with froths of lace at their cuffs, and the girls who hang out of the windows – or don’t – when they leave. He doesn’t know who he’s watching over.

He doesn’t know what he’s looking for.

There’s no brothel on the _Gabrielle_ , no tavern, but walking is better than lying on his back, dwelling, fearing to dream. Replacing both letter and glove beneath his pillow, Athos swings his legs out of his berth, stands, shifts his weight to the balls of his feet. He examines these, toes automatically curling to grip the floorboards. They are large, white, and the knuckles stand out as proud as the knuckles on his hands. The hand he uses to open the flimsy door is also large, also white, and far more aristocratic than it ought to be, considering the amount of cuts, burns and blows it has dealt (and been dealt). The vestiges of a young man who wore froths of lace at his cuffs dog his footsteps, so he goes out into the narrow passage and lets the door swing shut behind him.

“I wouldn’t recommend it.”

Aramis is seated on the floor, still wearing his leather doublet. He has his knees drawn up to his chest and is, as he always is, cleaning his pistol.

“I had no idea your feelings for me were ardent enought for midnight vigils,” Athos responds drolly, once his heart has resumed its usual rhythm. “If you were intending to make amorous advances on me, may I suggest knocking? Or perhaps honouring me with first three verses of _Flow My Tears_ , it’s a particular favourite.”

“You wound me.” Pressing his free hand to his breast, Aramis fails to appear even the least bit wounded. His words have an edge, however, an edge to do with the Aramis left in Douai, and the one with his knees drawn up to his chest. “And while I do agree you have a certain melancholy handsomeness about you, it’s Milady I’m waking for tonight.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I am not Milady de Winter.”

“No, but I came to the conclusion her best chance of a good night’s sleep came from me keeping an eye on you, not her.” Having rolled that eye upward, he returns it to his lap and pistol. “Your gentlemanly instincts do you credit, but she won’t thank you for disturbing her.”

“That wasn’t my intention.”

“Of course it wasn’t.”

“I wouldn’t have gone in.”

“Of course you wouldn’t.”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Neither can I.”

Athos joins his friend on the floor, feeling oddly naked without his own gun, not to mention his hat. It’s only Aramis, but this Aramis is apart from him these days. His speech has the same cadences, and sometimes he throws back his head and laughs, and Athos suspects it _is_ the same Aramis, but then the laughter ceases, and he pulls back into his thoughts like a crab. “I saw her at Whitehall,” this Aramis admits freely, flatly. “She told me she always breaks her promises, said I should ask you…I told her I’d keep my mouth shut about seeing her. It felt like I was having a conversation with two people, her claws came out, and then they went in, and then they were back out again…it seemed kinder not to tell you. I didn’t want you to lose sleep over her, and yet here we both are, losing sleep over her.” He chuckles mirthlessly.

“Then you agree with d’Artagnan.” Athos begins pleating the hem of his shirt, which is lace-free and, in fact, threadbare. “That she’s playing a game.”

“To what end? England was supposed to be her fresh start.” _With you_ , he wants to add, but doesn’t. It would sound too much like taking sides, like sympathy for that scar.

“But old habits die hard.”

“Hers or yours?”

Old habits could but hope to die as hard as the hard look Athos gives him, a musket ball of a glance from his gunflint eyes. “Better to go back to bed and risk whatever it is you suspect I’m planning to do than to waste your time pretending the woman you’re protecting is someone else entirely.”

He stiffens. “This has nothing to do with –”

“This has everything to do with Marguerite, and with the Queen. It has nothing at all do with – the future Duchess of Buckingham.” Athos gets to his feet, irritated because _she_ irritates him, and tonight she encompasses Aramis. It’s neither of their places to guard her, as it was in neither of their interests to encounter her again. Nonetheless, Milady is neither queen nor nursemaid, nor anything other than who, what she is. She deserves, at the very least, to have Aramis’ service for her own sake, not because she is a woman who reminds him of other women. He himself cannot make any more pronouncements about her deserts until he’s decided whether she’s playing games or not, and whether he hates her or not, and if he does, whether he hates her for the past, or the present (or the future she took with her to England, the future she gave to George Villiers, a damned sodomite with all the emotion of a damned sphinx).

“Sit outside her door if you must,” he says wearily. “But I won’t venture near there tonight. You have my word.”

But Aramis, it seems, has made up his mind. He pours a little more oil onto his rag.

“Tomorrow night, then?”

**.**

Tomorrow afternoon finds them docked in Le Havre, and Milady, ignorant of the happenings of the night before, pulling up a dark red hood over her hair. One of the grubby little creatures swinging its legs over the side of the quay springs up at her approach, attuned either to the chink of coins in a purse (in a purse at the side of a woman who has a knife on the other side), or the particular vibration put out into the air by Paris’ former finest thief. Either way, he knows of a doctor, a good one, a reputable one, not one who works late at night with dirty needles.

Le Havre is something like home. The tang of salt on the air and reek of fish guts are too familiar to Anne, as are the cobbled streets, as are the vendors who were plying their trade when she left not four months past. She took passage from here once before, to England again – or whatever the past participle of ‘again’ is – to become Milady de Winter. It was here she took her first steps on French soil, here she realised she was ruined indeed. Lord de Winter’s fortune, substantial though it was, was settled in its entirety on his brother; it might as well have been poured down the drain. The new Lord de Winter was _God-fearing_ , and God-fearing men rarely exceed their income, and God-fearing men are nigh impossible to seduce.

“Doctor Guiche’s house is that one, Madame: the one with the blue curtain.”

“And that’s where you’ll say you took me, if anyone asks.”

The creature’s eyes widen, shockingly milky in its dirty face. “Your companions, Madame?”

“Would you know them again, if they were to ask you?”

It has a snub nose, which it wrinkles. “There was a bear,” it recalls. “And a cat, and a fox, and a wolf. Four musketeers.”

“And you will say you took me…”

“To the house of Doctor Guiche, Madame. It has a blue curtain. I can show them where, if they’d step this way.”

Milady smiles. “Consider washing once in a while.” She takes hold of his chin, gripping hard to prevent him squirming away. “The day before the goodwives do their charities would be best. They’re more likely to give generously if you don’t stink, and you’re less likely to get caught if they’re standing close to you when you dip.” Nauseated herself, she pushes the creature away from her (pushes the past away with him). He staggers slightly.

“A small consideration, Madame? For my assistance in this matter?”

“You’ve already taken it.”

He grins. “Madame.”

“Thief,” she returns cordially, and he darts back down the alley leading to the main thoroughfare. Above her, wooden beams brace the houses on either side, providing a perch for dozens of pigeons. The thick crust of black and white shit on the ground is manageably crisp in some places, repulsively moist in others. The cooing and calling of the birds softens the noise of the street behind her; Milady steps back into the shadow of a doorway, a habit which keeps her apart and which, as such, she is unwilling to shake. She can walk unaided, thank God, so she’s no longer at the mercy of Aramis’ tender mercies. Her skin is cool, but the stench of Le Havre is strong. She needs a moment in this doorway, away from the people who throng the streets. She needs one breath, one instant of being that is utterly unobserved.

“What on earth have I done to deserve your protection?”

But such is life when your husband-to-be is the Duke of Buckingham, and your husband-as-was is his keeper.

Athos slides into sight, a shade out of the shade, a ghost in musketeer’s clothing. The pickpocket’s description of him was apt (and only a fool would be unable to make up his mind which of them is a bear, and which a cat, and which a fox, and which a wolf).

“The child was a thief.”

“Yes.”

“You let him steal from you.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

She lifts a shoulder, the curve of it visible beneath the sweep of her cloak. “He earned it. Now, do us both a favour, and leave worrying about my motives to your dear Gascon.” Another woman might slap him for his presumption, and though she’s struck him before, it isn’t something she likes to do. If anything, her instinct is to draw back – because Anne is afraid of Athos, of being backed into a corner by him, because he presents a kind of danger that no one else ever has, ever will. “Tell me what you want.”

“Last night, you had a fever. You were faint.”

“What of it?”

His head comes up from contemplation of her collarbones, of her ribbon (black today), of the heart she wears in the hollow of her throat, and when he meets her gaze, it’s as if _he's_ struck _her_. It would’ve been poetic, really, if he had died in the fire, when there’s so much fire in his eyes. He’s always burning for one reason or another, a pagan sacrifice in a wicker cage. That’s why he feels close to her even when he’s not, the heat of his body reaching out for hers.

“Those are common symptoms,” he remarks. “For women in a certain condition.”

And Anne retreats behind Milady, smarting from the blow.

“You have me at a disadvantage,” she purrs, voice silky, fingers itching to reach for her throat and the ribbon but refusing to give him the satisfaction. “Are you enquiring as to whether I’ve been fucking with His Grace the Duke of Buckingham, or half the English court, or whether your nightly self-abuse has somehow infected my dreams and conceived both our worst nightmares?” She comes out of the doorway at him with her hand gripping something imaginary and pointed, and he sees. She wants him to see. “We spent _months_ trying, Athos, in case you’d forgotten, in every field, and every shady spot, and every room in the house, and it became evident to me that I _can’t_ , and then you did your duty and hanged me, and after that, well, it hardly mattered anymore, did it?” She wants him to stop seeing, she wants to scratch out his hot grey eyes with her nails. She wants it to stop. “But since you so enjoy glossing over the parts of our mutual past which offer no new opportunities to hate me…it had only just stopped raining, do you remember? And I could’ve killed you, and it was in a street like this, but I didn’t…and I told you to _leave me alone_. Duke or no Duke, I can still make you regret it.”

“I regret–” He breaks off, runs his tongue over his lips. His mouth tastes different when it’s wet. “The day you were born.”

She’s gone before his brain catches up to that tongue, in a swirl of scarlet, the brightest thing in this filthy place, for miles around. Athos pushes himself into the doorway she occupied, into the relative darkness, braces his back against the wall. Here, he pulls his hat down over his face. Here, he tries not to be, not anything, not anyone. Here, he tries not to shoulder her suffering. It’ll break his back. It’ll take him back, and she’ll be dressed in white for the second time, and the rope will cut off whatever it’s better he never heard her call out to him.

At least Constance is wrong, which is of some comfort (he prefers to be right, which he does tend to be, except when it matters): he is not a good man.

**.**

Few people have any memories of the day they were born, but she’s heard the story so many times, she may as well have been a spectator rather than a participant. It sticks in the memory, the sordid tale of yet another girl child born in yet another brothel, of being less than an hour old and screaming so loud that she put the clients off their rutting. Whores birth bastards who become whores, but not Anne. There are very few sins she will not one day have to atone for, but she’s never sold her body. The line between being a mistress and being a prostitute may not seem important to the moral and well-fed, but it is when you’ve stood on one side or the other (then, it’s the limit of your soul).

The horses were unloaded from the ship first, stabled at the inn where they’ll spend the night before setting off for Paris in the morning. She has to remind herself that she still feels everything dully, as if through water, even as the flare of agony Athos lit in her becomes a broader, deeper ache. She pushes her face into the bay’s side, breathing hard. She is trying. She’ll continue to try. She will not rise to him, or look at him, or let his heat melt her and reduce her to tears.

“Are you…”

But God knows, she must never be allowed a moment of musketeer-free peace.

Porthos was seeing to his own mare, flicking stones out of her hooves with a curved pick. He stands there awkwardly, casually masculine in untucked shirt and muddy breeches, rubbing the back of his curly head. The horse’s side rises and falls, and its coarse hair brushes her cheek like reversed velvet, and suddenly his expression clears.

“You were looking for a brush, I’m guessing.” He gestures towards the bay. “I like to do mine myself too, the grooms don’t always brush both ways.”

“I…do you have one?” Strange, the lack of any need to rub at the redness on her cheek, to explain herself, to make herself presentable. Porthos, the bear, is so easy in his skin, and he looks at her with approximately the same amount of judgement the horse does. She has her suspicions about him. She has her suspicions about them both, and what separates them, and what defines them. He took the high road, she took the low. Now they’re both in a stable in Le Havre, so she takes the brush from him, spits discreetly on the straw to dispense with the sour taste in her mouth, and begins with the proud neck.

They work in silence for a time, on coal black and glossy chestnut. Milady reacquaints herself with her hands, with their precise movements, with her long, flexible fingers. It’s an assassin’s hand, but it can mend as well as end.

“Your accent,” says Porthos, without taking his attention away from his mare. “That’s not how you've always talked, is it?”

“No,” she admits, surprising herself by being honest (so comfortably does he fit inside his skin, it appears he’s gotten under hers too).

“Ever been down the Rue de Temple?”

It’s a little too direct to be a passing pleasantry.

“And the rest.”

“Thought so.” He’s gruff, but pleased. He’s pleased in a way she doubts will give her cause for regret later, a miracle in itself (questions about the Court of Miracles aside). He huffs, sounding like the horse. “Feeling more yourself today, then?”

She feels more herself in this stable than she has in a quarter – in spite of Athos, because of Athos, because she would’ve walked on broken glass to never have to walk the Rue de Temple again, and Porthos appreciates that – but he’s entitled to an inch of her, no more.

“Comb,” she orders, and he lets it drop.


	6. The Count

“And so to Paris.”

There’s a definite atmosphere – and if not an atmosphere, then certainly a something – in the air this morning, something unspoken, the bastard child of a conversation George Villiers wasn’t privy to. As it happens, he prefers those.

“To Paris.” Milady de Winter raises her cup, drains it of ale in two gulps. Buckingham watches her long throat convulse. He would like to go to bed with her, he thinks lazily, if only to see if she stays ice cold while being ridden at a gallop across a sea of stormy bedlinen. Milady de Winter fucks, surely, and fucking requires at least a little friction, at least a little heat. She must have made love once, but even an imagination as overdeveloped as his can’t quite picture it. The possibility (and impossibility) of it intrigues him, though. He’s confessed as much, and whether or not she shares his curiosity as to their sexual compatibility, the Duke neither knows nor cares.

Athos intrigues him. _Their_ sexual compatibility intrigues him. It isn’t fair that he has to be surrounded by beautiful men who most likely love and make love in the ‘natural’ way, so the very least he deserves is _not_ to be privy to a conversation regarding how it was between them. Then, he could find out. Then, he could scoop it out of one or the other of them, lift a scallop out of its shell.

Then, perhaps he could see the beautiful, angry man making love with the beautiful, angry woman, which would be _something_ …Buckingham wishes they’d give him something, anything to go on, as neither could be persuaded to want him, and he would only ever want either or both on the rare occasion he remembered to – but this is no Arthurian epic, no tale of long-haired virgins and limp-lanced chevaliers. What there is between them, what gives him something to chew over along with soft cheese and warm bread, is an absence: an absence of looking, an absence of speaking, an avoidance of one another which would appear casual if it weren’t so constant (one can only quit a room when the other enters so many times).

Still studying Milady, Buckingham spears a sausage on the point of his knife, then picks up her left hand. He appreciates its stillness, frozen at his touch.

“I have a gift for you.”

“A gift?”

“To plight my troth.” A large, square ruby, plucked from his smallest finger and slid onto her fourth. They’re similar shades of pale. The stone glows red-blue rather than ruddy. “A token. A reminder.”

“Do I need to be reminded?” She arches a dark brow. “We’re travelling to Paris together, flanked on both sides by France’s most honourable and irritating. I could hardly forget that you’re my meal ticket, or that I’m your soiled bedsheet to brandish at the King.”

She’s much more than that, of course. She’s to be a spy again, and she knows it. She’s also to be an adornment, an affectation, a pet Papist to bemuse French and English alike, and this she knows too. What she doesn’t know yet is the scale of the chessboard, or how much she’ll still matter when the game has been played to her patron’s satisfaction. She’s to be an affectation, and maybe she’ll stare longingly at Athos then. Maybe she’ll indulge him with whispers then, and sighs. Maybe that beautiful, incorruptible man will agree to do all manner of things for Buckingham to ensure he doesn’t fuck her, or harm her – or let her off the leash (he has more reason that most to fear her, after all).

“To Paris, then,” he says again, and Milady’s eyes gleam across the table at him.

She once loved a man, and he loved her, but no matter how he tries, the Duke can’t quite imagine it.

**.**

Last night, she dreamt of the sound of cart wheels on damp grass. Tonight will be worse, but the predictability of it all gives her power. Tonight, she may wake up choking, but Buckingham has a case filled with a dozen different tinctures to deal with his dozen fashionable ailments, so she has options. That’s power. That’s what it’s about, power; that’s what Milady and the Duke are about. Power is the ring on her finger, the Duchess’ rooms at York Place, the Duke’s private army at her command. Power is never being helpless again. Power may even be never being hopeless again.

“Good morning, d’Artagnan.” Anne slows her mount to a walk alongside the youngest of their party, whose horse switches its tail, unconvinced by the greeting.

“Milady.”

“So you’re a married man now.” She sits back in her saddle. “A musketeer, and a married man. Are you old enough to be a married man, d’Artagnan?”

“I was old enough to do the things married men do when I did them with you.” He looks at her frankly out of golden-brown eyes, so pretty and so rude. He’s an Adonis cast in bronze, handsome by design but polished to a gleam by young love and a lust for life. He eats, he drinks, he fights. His demons stay safely hidden behind the drapes. She likes him, in spite of bad manners and past grievances, but his beard is growing in, and that, she doesn’t like (pretty boys shouldn’t leave marks when they kiss you).

“Those weren’t the things married men do.”

“Aren’t I more qualified to understand married men than you?”

“What, having been one for all of five minutes?” Milady laughs lightly, clicks her tongue. Both horses respond, picking up the pace to keep them in time. “I envy your Constance, really – not like _that_.” She rarely dips her quill in the same inkwell twice. “She knew you, knew exactly who she was marrying, what price she’d have to pay. She came to you with her eyes open. So few women do. They’re sold into it by their families, or sold the dream of romance by men who want to bed them.”

D’Artagnan cocks his head on one side. “You sound like the Comtesse de Larroque. As I recall –”

“As you recall, I was working for the cardinal. There was nothing personal about it. I’m as entitled to share her less idiotic opinions as she is to share mine.”

“Oh no, nothing _personal_.” He’s mugging for her now. “You wouldn’t have taken any pleasure whatsoever from watching her burn, from reminding Athos whom he belongs to.”

She gives him a long, narrow look. It lasts, and lasts, until he finally begins to squirm under her scrutiny. “I don’t believe you are old enough to be married,” she says quietly. “You lack the ability to forgive or forget.”

Anne leans low over the neck of her horse, feeling the proud shape of the ruby beneath her glove, thanking God she’s at the mercy of a man like that instead of a boy like this, a boy with principles. He lets her go possibly because he has no choice in the matter, and possibly because he has no reason to stop her. He has no reason to hate her, not with so much water under the bridge, but d’Artagnan has already sacrificed reason and good sense on the altar of the letter in his jacket (the letter that was waiting for him in Le Havre, as Constance promised it would be). Constancy matters so much to him, perhaps even more than courage. There’s a limit to Constance, to how far she’ll go, to how many arms she’ll twist to achieve her ends. Milady has no limits. Milady follows no patterns he can predict, so he can’t ever smile knowingly when she ends up walking the road he suspected all along she would: she’s only ever predictable in one thing.

D’Artagnan doesn’t like to think about that, to give credence to the fact she can still feel.

Buckingham is at the head of their small cortege, riding in silence beside Athos. Anne finds herself annoyed all over again by his captaincy, that it’s him here instead of Treville. Her disinterested dislike for Treville borders on respect, and he can be managed.

She finds herself annoyed by his refusal to engage, by the fine fringe of lowered lashes beneath the lowered brim of his hat.

“Your Grace.” She addresses the Duke in a confidential tone, as if that might make their conversation the slightest bit private. “I do believe I’ve decided on the perfect name for your generous gift.” The gift to which she refers has four legs and four shoes on its hooves, and is a good deal more sweet-tempered than her mistress is at present.

“Oh?”

“Melusine.”

“Melusine,” he repeats, with no recognition. “What does it mean?”

“No idea.” Milady shrugs. “She’s a private beast, so I named her for the story of Melusine.”

“I can’t say I’ve heard it.”

“Then permit me to be your Erato.” This may be laying it on a little thick, but Buckingham merely nods, and the shadow at his side does nothing to forestall her. Tucking a fold of her skirt between her thighs, she begins. “There once was a count, a young man who was rich, handsome, and well set up in the world. The only thing he lacked was a wife – but fortunately for this count, he was riding through the woods one day when he came upon a young woman standing in a grove of trees. Her beauty was more than equal to his, and there were lilies woven in her long hair. The count, who appears have been a direct sort, proposed marriage to her on the spot. As she was as captivated by him as he was by her, she agreed – but only on the condition that he allow her one day of complete privacy every week, in order for her to bathe. If he ever intruded upon her at one of these times, she would disappear, and he would never see her again.

“The count agreed; he would’ve agreed to anything.”

His hand tightened on the reins when she mentioned a count, she saw it (though the first page of their story hadn’t taken place anywhere as picturesque as a grove with a lily pool). They’d begun at a party in Paris, a party her made-over dress only just managed to gain her entry to. She’d been late, but not so late that everybody’s money had been lost at cards. Her life was already changing: she’d already gone from low-rent cutpurse to high-class thief, and who knew how much higher she might rise? She wasn’t paying attention to the conversations she dipped in and out of (as she dipped in and out of patrician pockets), and she wasn’t listening to his: it was his voice that gave her pause. It was the sardonic way his tongue curled around every word, derisively funny, and so she glanced up, and so she was lost. It was a matter of moments, that was the worst of it. In a matter of moments, Anne de Breuil went from being just herself – in her tight, made-over white gown – to being him too. She’d stared into his grey eyes, raincloud-coloured, and felt certain suddenly. Whose son he was held no sting for her, what mattered was that he was hers.

And he _was_ hers. She was sure of it.

“The young woman’s name was Melusine, and she became his countess. They were happy…for a time, but the count, being a man, couldn’t let a mystery like that – or a threat like that – rest.” The comte is watching her now, his lashes unfairly long, his features crudely handsome by contrast. He’s not pretty, not by any stretch of the word (but then, neither is she). “So one day, while she was bathing in supposed privacy, he risked a peek…and what should he see but a great, shining tail, a tail of blue and green scales where her legs should’ve been. She caught him, of course.” The blood is beating in her lips, in the tips of her fingers. This comes too close. “Because he cried out. He was so amazed – so disgusted – by what the woman he’d married had turned out to be.

“But he’d broken the promise he made to her when she agreed to be his, and Melusine and her bathtub sank down into the rock floor, never to be seen again.”

The wonder of it was that he had been just as drawn to her. She’d walked through a dream to put herself in his way, a blur of candles and glowing faces and low bodices. There was no mistaking intent for anything else, not with how he was looking at her, not with how she was looking back. For the life of her, she can’t remember what excuse she used for her curtsey. She can’t remember his reply, or how they ended up in the garden with the cool night air between them (though it was probably caustic, and she probably didn’t care). Like Melusine’s count, he’d sensed her difference, her distance from the world that was his world, a world she only slotted into on the say-so of others. He’d taken her as she was, silently made the promise not to ask. He’d taken her with him, to a room with a bed with clean sheets and fresh flowers on the table. She does remember the silkiness of their petals.

She does remember his skin.

“So suffer all men who break promises to their wives.” Buckingham inclines his head, the pale fawn fur of his collar fluffing up in the light wind. “So you named her Melusine…”

“As a warning, Your Grace.”

He studies her, weighing her wit witht the quality of a cat making up its mind whether or not to scratch. “Comtes are an unlucky breed, it seems.” And there are his claws. “This area has legends of its own about the wrongs done comtesses by their loving husbands, does it not?”

Milady remembers the hot, sharp scent of Athos, on the shirt lying on the floor, on the back of his neck. She remembers his accusation in the alley the day before.

(She remembers the sound of cart wheels on damp grass).

“Surely it’s the comtesses who are the unlucky ones.”

Athos was always good at turning to stone. By the time she glances in his direction again, there’s very little flesh or feeling left to torment.

**.**

The man in black has been following them since Le Havre. They didn’t think to be careful on their one night in the town (they didn’t think they had to be). He has a cloak with a turned up collar and a fast horse, and keeps a turn or two behind them as they all take the road to Paris, one blue cloak after another like animals processing into the Ark.

The man in brown has been keeping pace with them since Portsmouth, hot on the other’s heels.

Neither would make a good enemy, and neither is a friend.

**.**

Tonight _is_ worse. Tonight is spent in an inn with one private room, and the mattress has fleas. Milady, grimy and bruised after a long day of riding at a lick she’s no longer used to, dragged the quilts down in front of the banked up fire and made a nest for herself on the unswept floor. Pennyroyal was strewn here once, and meadowsweet: she can smell them, though their dried out stems have long crumbled to dust. She’s washed herself as best she can in a basin of (cold) water, declining to take off her dress, to lay it out over the room’s single chair in case she wakes to find it mysteriously absent. She’s exhausted enough to sleep through the sound of footsteps, or grousing from the room next door, where the men – all of them – are.

The Duke of Buckingham, sleeping on a dirty floor with four snoring musketeers…she smiles slightly into the red and black embers, but doesn’t laugh.

She doesn’t mean to go down so easily, but the faint scents of dead herbs are soon replaced with green-tinged air. She called the air ‘green’ when he first brought her home, trying to explain the difference between the thin, clear air of the country and the soupy miasma of Paris in the summer, the reek, the tang of metal, the smell of waste, the overripe smell of oranges from old-fashioned pomanders. It had stuck in her throat on the day she was supposed to die, all the more ironic, really. She’d wondered, not absently, but in the cold, hard way she’d thought about everything every day since (stripping the beauty from it, and the feeling, and hence the fear), if she might choke on her own anger before he had a chance to hang her. What a thing that would be.

What a waste of her time, winding Remi around her little finger from her prison in the wine cellar, watching life go on as normal whenever the door to the kitchen opened, whenever it was never _him_.

What a waste of her life, when she’d put her time to such good use. She’d made plans. She’d made cold, hard plans, and if Olivier d’Athos hoped to hurt her worse than Thomas, why, she’d stop him too.

Stop him in his tracks with the knife on the table.

Stop him pressing forward even she’d told him to stop.

Stop him stopping her mouth, spit in his face before she killed him.

There was the smell of the air. The priest taking the flowers from between her fingers. Her letting them go, and meaning it. There went her love, into the hands of a devil in a clerical skirt, another man who held himself above, another man who wouldn’t speak for her. There went her love, and he’d have no more of it. He’d have nothing left of her to clutch to himself, nothing because she wouldn’t be dead, nothing because she would. Some part of her would die, and so would Athos, and when she looked at him, into him, when she searched bitterly for the understanding there would never be, he couldn’t hold her gaze.

The sound of cart wheels on damp grass. It was better happening then, robbing them both of any last goodbye, any false repentance out of fear. The warm drip of urine down her leg. Aramis honestly believed she was cavalier about death, when she knew about wanting to piss and fight and live and shit and surrender and die, all in the same breath.

It was just one breath between beginning and end, one gasp that sounded like a roar as blood and pain and the possibility of hellfire engulfed Anne, murdered the green scent of the air and the concept of love. It smashed the picture window her life had briefly become, and the blow felt real. She did die, but she died for love.

And she breaks the surface of the nightmare (the memory), scrabbling at the green velvet band around her throat. She’s damp under the arms, and behind the knees, and in her groin, and yet she’s cold. The shivering begins almost instantly. She grips the single chair by its unpadded seat, finds her feet through sheer force of will. She’s not dead. She’s not dead any longer. There’s no rope. There’s no hangman. Her life went on in a broken line like the broken, ugly line that reminds _her_ whom _she_ belongs to. Her knees are shaking, and the right nearly buckles, but _no_. She’s not dead. She’s not dead anymore. She won’t let him make her dead. She’ll make him look at her if she has to, the way he couldn’t, the way he shouldn’t. She’ll take his eyes and his tongue and make him change the past somehow.

She’ll make him save her (for she’s so sick of saving herself).

“Milady?”

“Go,” she snarls, and her throat feels raw indeed. It may as well have been his hands, damned man – it’s d’Artagnan in the doorway, his pretty eyes bright with alertness rather than concern. The choker is in her hand, and she knows he can see her, lit by one side by the dying fire, see her as she is, see the cracks running through her. “Go back to your master, puppy, and lick his boots if he asks you to. _Get out_.”

He steps back from the gap in the door, but it isn’t far enough (will it ever be far enough? Does he understand he’s an imitation of a greater man, and she should’ve killed him the instant she realised?)

“Shall I send Aramis to you?”

“ _Go!_ ” Poppy syrup and she are old friends, from the nights when this was every night, sometimes every waking moment too. She took what the medicine the Duke offered, but this sickness fills the part of her she let go when she let go of love. She widened the wound for him six years later, waited at the crossroads as if she was as fae as Melusine, as if she were in any position to be handing out ultimatums.

Where did her magic go?

Why didn’t he come?

D’Artagnan does go. No one else comes to her door, not to administer the last rites, not to be less of a man and comfort a woman like a horse, by petting her, by pandering to her, by pretending that the well of his comprehension is even halfway as deep as the dead drop she has inside.

They arrive in Paris the next day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dedicated to Alin, because nothing says many happy returns like emotional torture and posttraumatic stress.


	7. The Whore

Louis is doing his best to be a martial king. All this appears to entail is wearing black, in which he is imitated by most of the court; the Queen, unexpectedly defiant, is wearing a dress and pearl-embroidered collar of dark blue. Anne’s gown is pale blue (one she’s worn once before, but has since had recut in the English style – the woman she was before would’ve burnt it, but wasting good cloth for the sake of a bad memory is still a waste). She has nothing to say as Buckingham gathers himself before the familiar door, but the corners of her mouth make it seem as if she might be smiling.

“You look like you again.” Porthos, like the bear he’s been compared to or, indeed, the musketeer he’s worked most of his life to be, can be silent enough to surprise even her when he wants to.

“And what does that mean?”

“Like you’re about to stick a knife in some poor bastard’s back.”

She isn’t sure how to feel about that. On one hand, better to have them afraid of her. On the other, she _has_ changed. She doesn’t mean to smile like there’s murder on her mind.

They’ve only been in Paris a day, but it was time enough to twang the silk of her net, and a pleasing number of informants came scuttling out of the woodwork to tell her their news. One spider is here, a sleepy-eyed girl in a white cap who brings refreshments to the guards on the door. It was from her that Milady learnt about the black, and the blue, and the King’s exquisitely barbered beard and moustache, and that the French have sustained only a dozen casualties in the Spanish endeavour thus far. She paid the maid for her trouble from the same purse the Duke uses to pay her for hers (although his rate of return is much better, as she’ll be a duchess before long).

“You never saw me when I was myself,” she says coldly, to make him take a step back. “Only the woman one man or another led you to believe I was. You don’t see me now.”

“If you’re _quite_ finished?”

Athos: Porthos sees Athos clear as day, and the sunken state of his face borders on offensive. He sets too much store by his captaincy to come before the King having neither eaten nor slept, but he’s doing so anyway. It must be part of his new strategy, which is to deal with his wife by pretending she doesn’t exist (and to fail miserably, apparently, and to spend the night brooding over dispatches while the candle flame slowly dries up his eyeballs in their sockets).

At last, the musketeers drop their phalanx approach to guarding, and fall back behind Buckingham. D’Artagnan is fighting the urge not to jig up and down on the spot.

Aramis slaps him on the back with a little more force than is necessary. “Ah, d’Artagnan. Just when I think you’ve matured enough to be treated as an equal…”

He isn’t serious, but the wide, playful mouth has deeply serious brackets around it. Aramis has found escorting His Grace and his lady more engaging than anticipated, but he isn’t sure whether to be grateful to them for being as they are – old and new, gorgeously appointed and not to be trusted – or whether he wishes they were otherwise, bland and boring, incapable of distracting him from gazing into his own navel, thinking on his sins. There have been times, between London and Portsmouth and Le Havre and Paris, when the ghost of Marguerite has seemed rather less present than the men and woman around him. There have been times when he’s forgotten and, in remembering, has realised just how unforgivable forgetting is. It’s a sin without hope of absolution, neglect, somehow much worse than deliberate cruelty.

D’Artagnan slants him a glance that says they’ll finish this later. Before that, there’ll be Constance, a heartfelt reunion and a hot dinner; after that, there’ll be Spain.

Before that, there’ll be a glimpse of his son.

“Deo gratias,” intones Aramis under his breath, with all the baritone swing of the monk he was never destined to be. “Ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo.”

**.**

“De la Vega is in Paris.”

“De la Vega?”

Treville gripped Athos’ elbow in greeting, but drew him away from the main party, from the centre of the room where Buckingham is introducing himself to the centre of the universe. Louis is already baring his square teeth and pressing his fingers together, tilting forward over their manicured tips, laughing at something the Duke has said. Treville, who hasn’t forgotten Louis’ pre-emptive disdain for the new ambassador (or the fate of his last favourite), has his other hand on his sword. “Vargas’ first victim, de la Vega,” he elaborates. “His taste for torturing prisoners until they agree to do his bidding didn’t begin with Rochefort. De la Vega was a Protestant priest…I lack the words for what he is now.” The Minister for War looks grey, his normally healthy colour ashy with strain.

“De la Vega.” Athos has never heard the name. “Do we have any idea what he wants?”

“He doesn’t run with a pack we can bribe or trick our way into. Torture would have no effect, even if we could catch him.”

“So that’s a no, then.”

“That’s a –” But Treville knows Athos only ever pretends to take things lightly, so closes his fist around empty air. He exhales heavily. “No. Aramis is more likely to be mistaken for a Spaniard, d’Artagnan more likely to be seen as a threat. He’s small, nondescript. He blends in too well.”

“But?”

“But if de la Vega were only spying for King Philip, he wouldn’t have arrived the same week as the Duke. It’s too much of a coincidence.”

Athos senses the blow before it lands, braces himself for it. This conversation has only one conclusion, and Treville is too much the soldier to beat about the bush. “You want us to continue to protect Buckingham,” he deduces. “To stay in Paris while the rest of the regiment fight and die in Spain.” He lifts a brow, loses his pretence of levity to frustration, shakes his head. “This isn’t the kind of captain I want to be. This isn’t the kind of captain you were.”

“I know. And I know there are other…complications.” Complications which, out of respect for Athos, he refuses to name. “But there’s no one I trust more, no one the King trusts more than the four of you.” Treville grasps Athos’ arm again, offering half a smile. “You’re keeping better men than His Grace out of danger by staying in Paris.” He lets him go, clearing his throat. Then, reluctantly, “Do you have any idea –”

“No.”

“The King will remember himself enough to be embarrassed soon.”

“That’s the Duke’s reason for bringing her, not hers.”

“Does she need a reason?”

Before, his answer would’ve been different. Before, he was thin-skinned, but good at hiding it. Now, he feels constantly raw, chafed by her insults or her silence or her hurt or the glove, the cursed glove he should’ve left lying in the dust. She meant to change. She has changed, insofar as no one is dead yet, only mortally wounded by the fact that she isn’t. It’s only magnetism that turns his head, that makes him stare without seeing at the layers of skirts and the layers of woman beneath. He can’t apologise for the question he asked in Le Havre in any manner she would accept, so he isn’t going to.

What he is going to do (which is what he does best) is stew.

“Athos.”

“She’s here, so she must do,” he replies. “But I’d rather offer myself up to de la Vega on a platter with an apple in my mouth than enquire as to what that is.”

Milady knows all too well what is required to make Louis de Bourbon laugh: not much. He’s easily amused, easily diverted, easily swayed. His son has given him somewhat more substance, the chubby-kneed, pinkish creature Constance d’Artagnan rocks automatically in her arms, bouncing on the ball of one foot. She isn’t aware she wants a child, not yet, but Anne is. There’s a sweetness in the air around her, a glow to her skin – it’s creamy now, not pale. Someday soon, she’ll thank God that her son resembles his father, and not that he does not.

Being barren, she thinks drily, offers such insights into motherhood.

“I do not forget,” the Queen is saying earnestly, but pitched low enough that none of the group clustered around her husband can overhear. “The very great service you did me when we were last in one another’s company.”

“I suppose you could say it was my duty.”

Constance gives her a sharp look, but Anne’s bird’s-wing brows rise only slightly. “It was,” she agrees. She pauses, as someone once taught her to before saying anything that matters. “But I do  _not_ forget the very great wrong you did me first, the wrong which made such a service necessary to you not ending your days in despair and disgrace, Milady.”

The blood drains out of her lips, ascending to her cheeks. She can feel it. She can feel her claws worrying at the skin over her knuckles, itching to come out. She can feel what Porthos saw, and the fleeting pleasure of being recognised for doing something good is gone.

“What is it about other women’s husbands that intrigues you so?” The Queen is all innocence, all inoffensive interest (she has her own claws). “First His Majesty, and now His Grace…and your own husband such a fine man, one of the finest in France.” She smiles slightly, beautifully. Anne of Austria has the loveliest face, particularly in comparison to a face with hard angles and strong bones and no softness to it, only mask upon mask upon mask. “Your secret is out, Madame,” Her Majesty continues. “And though I do thank you, though I will always thank you for helping to deliver me from Rochefort, you will take care about what you do and say in my presence from now on, and, when you are not in my presence –” She indicates her lady-in-waiting. “Constance will be there to remind you.”

All in all, Milady is impressed by this speech. It means nothing, of course, except that she has to bite the inside of her cheek and count the flounces in Anne’s petticoat until her blood stops seething. She’d rather be out-and-out slapped than patronised, especially by a young woman (two young women) shining with rose petal soap and righteousness.

She was righteous once, when she was faithful once.

Milady sweeps a curtsey so low that her knee joints pop. “I shall endeavour to follow Your Majesty’s example,” she returns demurely. “In all things…fidelity included.”

On cue, the Dauphin crows, squirming to reach his mother. Constance bites her lip.

**.**

The turns are becoming more frequent, and they are annoying her. Dizzy and sick to her stomach, flushed both with distemper and malaise, Anne drops into a chair and kicks at thin air. One slipper goes flying across the room, knocking over a vase of heavy-headed roses. The flowers scatter, and Buckingham observes in taciturn amusement as the water they were standing in destroys the lace-edged table runner.

“Control yourself, Milady,” he says, for no other reason than to entertain himself. “But you are in control, aren’t you? You did that for effect.”

“You said so for effect.”

“You enjoy breaking things.”

“Yes.”

“Things which aren’t yours to break.”

She glares at him, eyes sticky with fever. “What is it that I missed? Did a decree go up on the door of Notre-Dame that today was ordained by God for me to be patronised by those no more moral than I am? The Queen dissembles as easily as she breathes, and you’d burn Paris to the ground and all of us with it if it would get you closer to the throne. Don’t preach to me, Your _Grace_.” The eyes close, a small crease of pain standing out between them. “There is no price I wouldn’t pay,” she says quietly. “To be no more than a ghost again, not to be beaten like a carpet with the paragon that is Athos, Athos as they view him. To not have him rammed down my throat every time I open my mouth would be…” Unimaginable. “Something.”

“He had a woman, did he not?”

“For a day or two.”

“Did you break her, or did he?”

“He saved her.” Milady bends to remove the other slipper, heedless of her whirling head. She feels black and bitter tonight, poisoned not by the Queen’s petty barbs, but by the fact that she tried. She tried to pin him down, that so-called paragon of virtue, and then she left, and now she’s back. He can have a woman, a captaincy, a battlefield to cut his way across and earn yet more glory. She took her dignity to England, and thought she could have it there, but it’s as if he drew her back: Athos, not the Duke, not Buckingham with his froth of lace and his light, lust-less touches. Her dignity is still in England, and her coolness. “She lied to him, but he saved her. Her crimes were noble, understandable to him. She didn’t deserve to die.”

He wraps his hand around one long, silk-wrapped foot, and she wills either of them to need more.

Neither of them do.

“I have something.” Illness is making her weary, and angry, and less committed to good behaviour when good behaviour gets her nowhere. Her knowledge of the French Court got her citrines, juicy orange stones, and the ruby betrothal ring. “Something that will bring Anne’s faithfulness to her husband into doubt once again. Something which may fit in rather nicely with the grand plan you refuse to tell me any more about – not that I care, so long as you marry me at the end of it.”

“I’m a faithful man,” Buckingham replies. “As God and my king are my witnesses.”

But which king?

(Not that she cares, so long as he marries her at the end of it).

“The Queen,” she begins. “Had a diamond pendant.”

And when she walks through Paris that night, breathing in the stink, her cheeks finally start to cool. Her steps get surer. Milady strides down the rues of her home, filth clinging to her heels, enjoying the simple push-pull of her leg muscles after several days of nothing but riding or standing to attention. She walks as if she isn’t aware of the three men following her, but none of them are bothering her (yet). The stones in the enclosing walls get sharper and the streets get narrower, but it’s like a dance, a dance she could do in her sleep. She could hunker down in the corner of a tavern and listen to treachery being plotted. She could flip a coin to the slut on the next corner and hear who’s fucking whom in Paris these days. She could even, luxury of luxuries, strain her eyesight at the house of the banned bookseller who only opens after midnight, devouring pamphlets by men who think like she does. Hell is Paris, and Paris is Hell, and she missed it –

And still more.

“Shouldn’t you be in Spain?” She wonders, when she can bear it no longer, but the third man (the other two are strangers, she won’t worry about them until she has to) takes his time coming out of the shadows.

Athos’ eyes are all but translucent in the moonlight. It suits him, the dark. “I have my orders.”

“You’re the captain,” Anne retorts. “Shouldn’t you be the one giving the orders?”

“And what kind of captain am I, exactly? A captain who sits behind a desk, requisitioning this many loaves of bread and that many linen shirts?” He’s drunk, she realises, both anticipating and ignoring the current which passes through her. He’s loose when he’s drunk, and the tigerish part of her used to like him better when he was loose.

“That’s twice now I’ve told you to stay away from me.” Her voice is crisp, unaffected. “One of these nights, Athos, I will kill you, you know.”

“For which of my many crimes, _Milady_?” Hangman he may be. Paragon he may appear. For more than her to see him like this would also be something, but this him is hers (and only hers) for a reason. It would be something else, she reflects, for him to wrap his fingers around her throat as he did once before. It would answer a question she wouldn’t ask if she were entirely herself, and not still listing slightly to one side.

“Don’t play the wastrel. It doesn’t suit you.”

“What if I am a wastrel?”

“Our long acquaintance has established you aren’t. A tender-hearted sot, perhaps, but nothing even close to an idiot.” He’s leaning against the jagged-edged wall, watching her stay still. She hasn’t pulled a pistol him, which goes to show how tired she really is. “This is your last warning, Captain.”

“What,” Athos enquires, quite politely in his own estimation. “Is he planning?”

“Nothing good.” She puts out a hand to steady herself, but draws it back before it can touch the filthy stone. “Nothing which concerns you.”

He tilts his head slowly to one side. It drops onto his shoulder in a manner that would be comical, except the expression on his face isn’t. “You’re ill,” he remarks. “Again.”

“Your concern is noted.”

“You were never ill before.”

“And what do you make of my being ill? Conspiracy? Seduction? It has to be one or the other with you, I’m good for nothing else.” Then she closes her mouth, grinding her teeth painfully together to prevent any other admissions. It makes things a little clearer, a little more sanguine. Pain has always been Milady’s touchstone, her way of checking where she is and how far she’s come and how far she has to go. “I don’t want to be honest with you anymore,” she tells him (honestly, ironically). The small silver heart hanging from the wide black ribbon around her neck is a weight, the heaviness of hope resting in the hollow between her collarbones. She fell into his arms on the seafront in Portsmouth, but she won’t fall again. “It only ever ends like this. We’re estranged. We should be estranged.”

The gunflint eyes pierce her. Then, he bows slightly, not at the waist, but at the neck. He might be praying, if he ever prayed.

“As you wish.”

And so it is; so it always is. There are no desires but hers to consider, her ultimatums, her defeats and surrenders to his mercy or the point of his sword. He’s disconnected. He _is_ estranged. He’s done what she can never seem to do, cut himself off from her completely. Well then, what is he to her? Just a man, a man like any other. He wears his clothes well, but with no particular style. His hair is in constant need of smoothing, and he hardly ever shaves, so being kissing by him results in a chin and throat covered in passionate scratches. He’s not classically handsome enough to merit a second glance, too melancholic, too arch. He’s just a soldier, a soldier like any other, smelling warmly of brandy and male sweat. He has nothing to offer a woman.

They should be estranged, she thinks dizzily. They should be over and done with. She ought not to have tried to recapture the past in the hope of a new future…and yet he has that piece of her, that wide-eyed, open-hearted piece of her. Seven years on, she still lacks the means of getting it back.

“Is that all you have to say?”

He’s stone, like the wall he leans on. She sees him as stone. He feels like stone, like magma gone cold after centuries of waiting. Whether there’s any heat left at his centre, any likelihood of coming alive again is anyone’s guess. “As…you… _wish_ ,” he repeats, conveniently forgetting that he has to see her the next day, and every day after.

“Go home.” Her lips barely move. “While you can still walk. I have enough shadows tonight.”

He’d be her shadow still, in spite of his plan to abjure her (if he really believed she wouldn’t catch him and ask him why).


	8. The Penitent

“Hunting?”

“Hunting.”

“We’re going hunting? In this?”

The rain is pelting down in dark grey rods, and they’re sheltering under the eaves at the edge of the yard. D’Artagnan’s incredulous expression might be better received by his brothers-in-arms if his own arms weren’t wrapped around Constance, his reluctance all for Constance’s benefit. As it is, his protests remind them he’ll always be a little younger (a little more selfish, a little more petulant), although his wife’s snort and, ‘I’m not the one who ran away to England, you idiot, stop squeezing me so tight’, go some way towards making up for the offence. He feels blissful, rooted – and d’Artagnan lacked roots even in Gascony, anything to hold him to one place, one time, to force him to grow. He returned to these barracks day after day, though, even before he had a commission. He returned to Constance, another man’s wife, to her sweetness, to her bluntness. Even now, there’s the honey and sunlight scent of the crown of her head, her heartbeat slow and steady, the warm hand covering the arm he has around her waist.

“Man,” pronounces Athos, his almost completely closed eyelids indicating a hitherto unseen level of exasperation. “Does not generally melt in the rain.”

“But he does die in Spain.”

Aramis is leaning against the wooden siding. He says so to be offensive, but Athos stays impassive (that, he can do, but not much else for his friend, not until Aramis himself decides to stop grieving, stop blaming, and remove his head from a certain portion of his anatomy).

Porthos exhales noisily, his hair curling more tightly and closer to his head in the rain.

“The King is going hunting, so we are going hunting, with the obvious exception of Constance.” Who shrugs, unoffended. “This trip would be an excellent opportunity for de la Vega to attack the Duke, if Treville is correct in his hypothesis that Buckingham is the Spaniard’s motivation for coming to Paris. Not the most honourable undertaking, I grant you, but there it is.”

The sun was shining when they rode into Paris but, as His Grace remarked shortly afterward, they appear to have brought England with them (they’re all growing to detest England, and all it entails). The rain will wash away the spoor of deer or boar, so the hounds will have a hard time tracking their quarry, and the court will have a hard time riding through the downpour. The Queen has elected to stay behind, but even those ladies who report on her to one or other politician or private concern would rather be risking their necks and muddying their gowns out in the woods, desperate to escape the pall cast over the palace by a war they can do nothing about.

“Do you think Treville’s right?”

“When has he ever been wrong?” Except in his choice of captain, which is the sole opinion of the captain himself, and no one else there present (not even Aramis). Athos pauses for a moment, dripping; self-doubt and a tendency towards self-destruction, he possesses in spades, but none of it shows on the surface. “So, based on the assumption that de la Vega has his designs on the Duke, we will continue to escort and protect him. I know none of us asked for this mission, but you’ve conducted yourselves admirably, with the obvious exception of Constance, who was here, being admirable in her own way rather than fleeing Paris and her new husband as fast as she could. We should all –”

“This is madness.”

No one wants to look at Aramis. It’s an unwritten rule that they should treat him like a child until this renewed phase of melancholia passes, averting gazes, feigning deafness.

“This is madness!” He shoves himself upright, away from the support, casting around for someone to make an enemy of. Athos is the only one who’ll meet his eye, so it falls to him (as he always intended it to). “We’re the _King’s_ Musketeers, so our duty is to the King, not to Buckingham, not to that…our men, your men, _Captain_ , are in the field, fighting and dying for France, and what are you doing?” He squares up to that granite façade, to Athos, Aramis the hot-blooded incarnation of all the others feel but refuse to say. “Bowing. Scraping. Bending the knee, doing as you’re told. The King orders you to escort Weston to England. Treville orders you to protect the Duke from de la Vega. _I_ order you not to lie like a faithful dog outside the door of your –”

Athos has Aramis with his back against the wall and an arm across his throat before any of the others can react.

“You didn’t kill Marguerite.”

“Athos, this isn’t –”

“Shut up. Aramis, you didn’t kill Marguerite.”

“Athos.”

“You didn’t kill Marguerite.”

“Athos!”

“ _You didn’t kill Marguerite_.” He shoves forward, applying still more pressure, willing Aramis to hear, to understand. Heencloses the hand not clawing at his sleeve in a crushing grasp, clenching his fist, feeling the bones creak under sword-roughened skin. “And you love a woman you can never have, but purely, honestly, and I believe she returns that love, and holds it as dear as you do. You fool, you have a child!” His voice rises to a near bellow, but his face remains curiously blank. Athos isn’t d’Artagnan (for all he suspects sometimes that being the emotional equivalent of a leaking pipe is the healthier way to be), can’t wear his heart on his sleeve. “That’s what they’re fighting and dying for: for their wives, for their lovers, for the mothers of their children. Listen to me!” He insists, finally removing his arm from Aramis’ neck in order to grip the familiar face between his hands. “Marguerite’s death was not your fault, and nor was Adele’s, and nor was Marsac’s. You believe in God, yes? Then you believe that God has a plan for all of us, including them, that they’re with him now. Surely they should be envied their state of grace, not pitied.”

Rain drums on the slatted wooden staircase above them, trickles through the cracks. They’re spared the worst of it, but the odd droplet still plops onto someone’s shoulder or rolls down the back of someone’s neck, louder than church bells in the silence. Even Constance knows better than to intervene, however.

“Marsac,” Aramis repeats flatly. “You dragged me back from Douai, but I should forgive you for the sake of Marsac.”

“Not everyone who loves you is dead,” says Athos, answering a different question. He thrusts Aramis away from him – or perhaps himself away from Aramis – and, lowering his head like a bull, goes out into the wet. His footsteps splosh through the muddy yard, become one with the roar of the rain (he’ll be better for being drunk in the morning, but that doesn’t mean he should be driven to it).

“We’re going hunting.” Porthos turns a quelling glance on d’Artagnan, then a longer, graver one on Aramis, who doesn’t meet his gaze. “In this.”

**.**

Two can play at keeping talismans, but one has never felt the urge to wear hers around her neck. She ought to have lost it, really, let it go as he did her locket. She’s sentimental, she supposes, rolling the gold circlet between her fingers but superstitiously refusing to put it on, even to check the fit.

Anne is languishing on Buckingham’s enormous tester bed, writhing like a cat against the coverlet because she honestly couldn’t care less how he sees her (as what he sees in won’t change, not while she still has backdated scandal and cutting repartee in excess). Her late night walk brought her back to the Louvre, where none of the men on her tail could follow, and the Duke rarely sleeps. He was awake and watchful, seated before the fire with a tincture and dropper at his elbow, refusing to lean against the chair’s brocaded back even in the privacy of his own chamber. She said nothing, just removed her shoes, loosened her laces, and curled herself into a ball on the bed, facing away from him. Both forms, rigid and softened in repose, glowed amber at their edges in the firelight.

“You were indiscreet,” she says abruptly. “With King James. It’s common knowledge you prefer the company of lords to ladies.”

“I prefer the company of neither,” he replies. “Or both, come to that.”

“We need something, some show of virility.” Milady rolls over onto her front, and Buckingham notes the spill of her breasts with aesthetic appreciation but only minor lust. The wink of his ruby on her hand does please him, because he likes to be king of all he surveys (in actuality, if not by birth). “The court needs to believe you could heat a woman’s blood to the point where she forgets that she has a husband, that her husband is a king, that she has a duty to her king…they believed Aramis could.” She has a small gap between her front teeth, a gap which shows when she smiles. “But he’s Aramis, and you’re not.”

“Quite.” She’s speaking objectively, of course, and Buckingham knows that the gallant Aramis would never be his betrothed’s choice. “You wouldn’t have him if you could, would you?” He enquires anyway.

“No.”

“May I ask why?”

“When a woman thinks of male beauty, she thinks of Aramis. She can’t help herself.” She sits up, snagging her laces. “He’s perfect, as men go, both in face and form, so he isn’t real. A woman imagines herself in a dream if she goes to bed with Aramis, and you may as well go to sleep if all you plan to do in bed is dream.”

“It requires a great deal of trust to go to bed and sleep, and nothing more,” the Duke remarks. “I thank you for paying _me_ that particular compliment, Milady.”

The feline green eyes, previously lazy, glitter with amusement. “Is that what you thought that was? It means nothing to sleep in the bed of someone who has a use for you, Your Grace, and so has more to lose by your death. Trust –” She clicks her tongue at the word, dismissing it. “Trust is sleeping in the bed of someone whose life would be better if they could just get up the courage to stab you, shoot you, or hold a pillow over your face. Trust is the foolish belief that they would never harm you, no matter the inducement.”

The two things aren’t connected, but Anne slips the gold ring (warm from her skin, the ring she was wearing the day Athos couldn’t watch her die) into her sleeve. The smell of her own sweat is pungent, she wants a hot bath and an unrelated task to clear her head. She wants her own room, but is almost too afraid of being alone with herself to seek it.

“And while we’re on the subject of trust…” Buckingham’s coat has facings of silk, glistening like a split orange. He’s as likely to do up his own buttons and hooks as he is mark that marble smooth brow with visible emotion or concern. “That intrigue you were involved in last year.”

“What of it?”

“You and the captain clearly have a method of communication which transcends however repellent you find one another.”

She goes for the small dagger sheathed in her garter, buying herself time. The truth, in the end; there’s little to be gained by lying (and even less chance either will need to send secret letters again). “Adsum,” she tells him.

“Adsum?”

“Adsum. _I am here_.” Milady adjusts the tie and stands, shaking out her skirts. “That’s all the Latin I have, enough to say ‘I am here’, then the time and place. As long as I use the code word, he’ll come.” It’s a simple enough system which still allows for human nature – his cagy, hers conniving – as the only part which is necessarily true is the part which follows the code word. This means there’s a safe stretch of paper where they can write whatever they like, and mean none of it, and have the other know they mean none of it. Only the part which follows the code word, the only word of Latin he ever taught her, matters.

“He trusts you.”

“As far as he can throw me.” She’s done discussing it now, not in her unclean, unready state. Perhaps later, after scented soap and a fresh gown and something to eat (perhaps never again). “Were you aware the King forbade me from accompanying you on the hunt? It took some gentle persuasion from Her Majesty to change his mind, though I’m sure much eye-rolling and wine-drinking played its part. You, my lord Buckingham, are to be indulged in everything, it seems.” Her toes protest at being forced back into her shoes after a night’s worth of walking, but the future Duchess of Buckingham considers pain a reminder she’s not dead (yet), and the shoes will be off again soon as she’s in her own room in any case. “I’ll contemplate your virility while you contemplate whatever poor creature we’re all riding down.”

“Did you have something in mind?”

“Constance,” is his answer. “Constance d’Artagnan. Whatever happens, I want her to see it.”

**.**

The French endeavour, supported whole-heartedly by a Spanish queen whose brother’s doings are beyond her comprehension or compassion, fades into non-importance once the court is deep enough into the fiorest. The canopy of interlaced branches, emerald and dun, protects them from the worst of the weather, and the thunder of horses’ hooves and the chatter of ladies who’ve spent too long silent gives an air of release to the outing.

“A little further, Your Grace?” Asks Louis, who is being cavalier, in keeping with his à la mode beard and moustache.

“Why not?” Buckingham yawns elegantly. “If the inhabitants of the Louvre are not fed, how will they grow fat and self-important?”

“How indeed!” Louis slaps his thigh, and Buckingham smiles his thin smile.

Milady has been trotting amiably enough beside Porthos, since it appears she _must_ have a guard, and may as well have a guard who won’t catechise or exorcise her. A horse’s width is far enough, if they talk of the past in abstract terms, the son of a slave and the daughter of a whore. They might’ve climbed the same walls, stumbled into the same fists when they stumbled down the same blind alleys. Their memories aren’t fond ones, but they are theirs, and there’s an air of release there too.

She’s been watching the group up ahead while Melusine noses curiously at Porthos: horse, sleeve, pockets, boots. The slight raise of her brows is his only indication of interest.

“He’s shaved,” she says.

“Yeah.”

“And bothered to change his coat.”

“Had to be done.”

“He looks…presentable.” Her expression of mild disgust is almost (but not quite, since he values his skin so highly) enough to make him laugh out loud. He does allow himself a chuckle, a nigh inaudible sound, which she registers but doesn’t respond to.

“He’s captain now.” He wonders if she’s aware that she fiddles with the necklace around her throat when she speaks of him, for it’s a circle of sapphires the same deep blue as Buckingham’s doublet. “Standards and all that.”

“You’re staring at me.”

“It’s where my eyes were pointing.”

“You have questions.”

“We’ve all got questions. Aramis would tell you God has the answers, but He’s not all that forthcoming.”

Athos can cut a dash when he wants to, and they’d both forgotten. They notice it now, and the carefully arranged folds of his cloak, and the vulnerability of his freshly shaved throat. She sees more than he does, of course. She sees the hard, grey look in his eyes, the implacability which makes women wonder about his melancholy, or cruelty, or both. She sees that, estranged or not, it would take one tug to loosen the knot at the neck of his shirt, one movement to rid him of it completely. She understands herself better than anybody else, better than even _he_ does, and she craves him, and she hates him, and she wants the musky, salty tang of him all the more because she’s taken another step back, and soon she’ll take another, and one day she’ll be too far away to get the scent of him in her nose, and she’ll be cured. One day, she won’t rise to his studied indifference, her thighs tensing around Melusine’s ribs.

“You finally managed to make a silk purse out of sow’s ear,” she remarks, and Porthos gives a bark of laughter which scares the birds right out of their nests (he’s decided it’s worth the chunk she’ll most likely take out of him for the privilege).

It’s not loud enough to cover the whistle of the musket ball which sears across her sleeve and thuds into a nearby silver birch, spraying out whitish splinters in every direction.

“Amateur,” she murmurs, before the shrieking starts.

“Protect the King!”

Anne’s mouth makes brisk contact with the pommel as she’s pushed flat by a well-meaning hand. She almost bites clean through her lip, and straightens at once, spitting out blood as her mount backs daintily away from its screaming, rearing fellows. Red runs down her chin like foul-tasting rain, and she rounds accusingly on Porthos.

“That shot was meant for the Duke!”

“And correct me if I’m wrong, but you work for the Duke!”

She looks for him then, meets his eyes: long, narrow, black. All around is confusion, but they are the fulcrums around which human idiocy revolves (assassins, and traitors, and musketeers). Aramis and d’Artagnan have converged on the King. Aramis has an arquebus braced on his arm, ready for the next attack.

“Find him,” hisses Buckingham (no louder than a snake in the grass), but she hears him.

Wheeling Melusine around, Milady kicks her hard in the side, galloping in the direction of the shot. She leans low over the horse’s arched neck, and the forest whistles by in a blur of green, bringing tears to her eyes, making them burn and her burn with them. How boring it is to sit and stand and curtsey, which seems to be all she’s done since they came to Paris. Being good shouldn’t mean being idle, but this isn’t acceptably ladylike, and this is what she does best.

Her own blood tastes hot, sour, spurs her onward.

She follows his trail through the bracken, reining up sharply when the treeline ends on an empty field, devoid of both life and further clues. Undeterred, she drops down from the saddle and to her knees, scrabbling in the dirt for foot or hoof print. There’s a certain viciousness to it, to seeing her hands dirty again, to embracing instead of struggling against the pull in both directions: to be a diamond dressed as a woman, and to smash the picture window she herself built up, pane by pane.

“Anything?”

“Nothing.” Sitting back on her haunches, she probes the dinge in her lip with the tip of her tongue (it stings).

“What happened?” Athos kneels down beside her and immediately goes still, not touching, not moving any closer. He watches the red drops fall, soak into the chalky dust.

“Your card-counting friend is labouring under the delusion that I need his protection.”

From a few feet behind them, there’s another low chuckle.

“You shaved,” she observes.

“Yes.”

“The would-be assassin was either blind, rash, or not aiming for His Grace.”

“Or all three. That description would fit any number of Frenchmen, not to mention Spanish and English agents.”

“There are more spies in Paris right now than whores, thieves, and beggars put together. Why single him out? Surely there are enough unprotected diplomats and grandees.”

Silently, a greying handkerchief appears in the air in front of her nose. They both continue to stare at the ground while she takes it, blots her mouth, and passes it back without expecting him to accept it. He does, though, and tucks it into his glove. One end protrudes, a tiny crimson flag – he’s her Virginia, she thinks, but she’s staked a claim on him without meaning to. What possessed her to give it back? What possessed him to take it, to wear her hurt on his sleeve?

“Is this your idea of protecting the King?” She asks coldly, drawing back her skirts.

“Forgive me –”  _Never_. “But it occurred to me that my duty to _His Grace_ might include ensuring you didn’t dash your brains out on the branch of a tree. Your horse appeared to have bolted.”

“It hadn’t.”

“My mistake.”

“You won’t rid yourself of me that easily,” she says. “For all you regret the day I was born.”

“You might’ve been happy,” he replies, getting to his feet. “Had you been born any other day.”

“I was happy.” He doesn’t offer his hand, so she doesn’t take it. “Once.”

In a field such as this, with something sweeter than blood soaking into the chalky dust.


	9. The Victim

The soulless take no pleasure in small things. Constance, whose soul could fill a cathedral, takes pleasure in all the little things which make up life, in all those which take up minutes, not hours. She sifts through the Queen’s jewellery, enjoying the coolness of links and heaviness of stones, looking for a slightly barbaric bracelet of quartz and agate that Her Majesty wants to gift to a Swedish lady (who’ll hopefully take it back to Sweden with her, never to be seen again).

“Madame d’Artagnan?”

The name still starts roses blooming in her cheeks, but she merely turns over another length of gold. “The Dauphin is sleeping,” she warns (and the Queen is watching over him, looking like nothing so much as an angel, blonde curls brushing her cheek).

“I…Madame d’Artagnan?”

When she does meet his eyes, the boy blushes redder than Constance. She’s something more than beautiful while she’s enjoying small things, and she was already pretty when she was a draper’s wife. “Don’t look so scared. I’m not some great lady you need to fear if you want to keep your position.” Spotting a nugget of translucent quartz in amongst the glittering bric-a-brac, she wraps two fingers around it and lifts it out, smiling at him with the side of her mouth he can see. “Do you have a message for me?”

“His Grace,” he stutters. “His Grace…His Grace requests your presence, Madame…a-a-at once.”

“His Grace?”

“His Grace, Madame, His Grace…His Grace the D-D-Duke of Buckingham.”

She’d been thinking about her medicine box, about the dried packets of herbs she’d inherited from Lemay, about his receipts, about the life he left behind. She’s glad she didn’t love him, but she can’t really be glad because she can’t really imagine having loved him: there’s d’Artagnan, and before d’Artagnan, there wasn’t anything. He’s the only kind of love she knows, so she mourns the doctor more for the questions he’ll never be able to answer than for the life they were never able to share.

Constance sighs for what was, and for the interruption.

“And do you have any idea _why_ His Grace the Duke of Buckingham requests my presence?” She folds her arms, and the boy gulps. He’s very much like the trembling, bubbling Jerome Weston, now repatriated to a country where presumably trembling and bubbling are more desirable traits. “Her Majesty doesn’t like me to be far from her side.”

The boy, growing bold in his impatience, shrugs. “He d-d-didn’t say, Madame.”

Constance sighs again, lays the bracelet on the Queen’s prie-dieu where she’s sure to see it. More out of habit than necessity, she wipes her hands on her skirt.

“Then take me to His Grace the Duke, if you please.”

Milady has her eyes closed, and her emotions chained, and she knows her duty better than most, but that doesn’t mean she relishes it (her mouth is already kiss-swollen from a half hour of attempts). Buckingham has pressed himself against her over and over in the confined space behind the curtains where they’ll inevitably be found by anyone passing by. It’s like prostrating herself on a marble floor, like baring her neck and shoulders for the attentions of a mortician. While he’s both considerate and thorough, she couldn’t be less roused. It would look better if she could respond to him – he at least has risen to the occasion, the shape of success evident against her thigh – but the pro forma caresses leave her empty, and the hand which will be up under her gown by the time the damnably slow Constance arrives had better be prepared to be denied entry.

“As this was your scheme,” he drawls, flicking her earring with a fingertip, doing it again to make it swing. “Perhaps you could endeavour to make it appear less like a rape.”

“It’s always a rape,” she retorts. “It’s always about power, so it’s always a rape. Whatever men do to women, however good you believe your intentions to be, is a rape. You take something from us every time, exchange it for gifts or poetry or kindness.”

“You were the King’s mistress.”

“I let him take something from me – not that it wasn’t something I’d other men had taken, other men who mistook it for my heart – in exchange for gifts and position, to satisfy my curiosity as to whether weak men really do want strong women, or whether they just believe they do. It gets boring, lying on your back like a wife, whispering how wonderful he is.”

The Duke, darker still in the shadow of the curtain, pinches her earlobe. “You’re a strange woman.”

“Yes.”

A pinch is at least honest.

If this was what she longed for, for the intimacy, for the jerk and the spill, she could have it. It’s over so fast, though, once he’s mounted and found his stride and bellowed his victory, once he’s taken that something she spoke of, be it dignity, virginity, love. What she longs for, in unchained moments, is to have him rise to her touch when she lays her head in his lap. She wants to see his jaw tighten, to watch him wait as she turns her face into him, to know he’d wait all night to swell her lips past the point of stinging and bite her bloody because that’s honest too. His Grace has his suspicions, but she doubts he’d care if he knew what she longed for with emotions unfettered. This was her scheme, so hers are the consequences.

“Kiss me again,” she commands, making the exchange.

Dust motes rise from the floor as the curtain is pulled back.

He looks almost brutish against all that elegance; silhouetted by the late afternoon sun behind him, Athos stands quite still. He takes in the scene, the players, the lust light burning in her green eyes (lit by the fantasy of someone other than Buckingham). He recognises her, this her, comte as count, squinting through a screen at the true nature of the beast. He recognises the edge she’s on, because he looks like a hot coal (lit by the fantasy of another her), and neither can imagine what might happen if they fell off the wrong side of the metaphor. It’s why he doesn’t stay, not even long enough to hear what she might’ve said. He stays only long enough to see her draw breath, to see the light go out, before dropping the curtain without a word.

She moves very slowly after that, as though she’s in pain.

“Your doing, I presume?”

“A gift.”

“A reminder, you mean. A reminder that I belong to you.” Another rope, and another hangman. It’s always about power, after all, and who has more power than the man who pulls your strings? “So you sent for him instead of Constance.”

“I sent for both. I wanted to see who would arrive first –” George Villiers is a hangman indeed, pressing a chaste kiss to the pulse in her throat while remaining as expressive as granite. “Madame d’Artagnan, if I sent for her, or the gallant captain, if you did.”

“Adsum,” she says bitterly. “And he came, just as I told you he would.”

“Adsum,” repeats Buckingham, unmoved by the accusation. “Your scheme, Milady de Winter. Your victim.”

**.**

“What can I get for you, Monsieur?”

“Do I look as though I care?”

The barkeep nods his greasy head; Athos resists the urge to put his own on the table. It’s where it’s most likely to spend the rest of the evening, but the uniform demands some respect, some semblance of pride.

Some semblance of armour.

He’s long past the point of being surprised when the world works backwards. He thought she seemed more fragile, and cared more because of it (if any man could care more, if any planet could more stubbornly circle the place the star at the centre of its naïve universe was before) Weakness. Idiocy. Melusine and the count who loved her were permitted such a love only because they were figments of the author’s imagination, not because it was real, survivable. It didn’t uplift, didn’t give hope, didn’t spur onward. It promised bile when they were together, or the seduction of oblivion otherwise. He’d gone beyond the call of duty in pursuit of that oblivion, and it seemed to them that he was great. It seemed to them he was worthy of being followed.

The world works backwards, and so although she’d told him to leave her alone for the God-knew-how-many-th time, they’d still ended up on their hands and knees in a field, searching the dust for traces of a would-be assassin.

“This must be the only dry ground in France.”

“No tracks.” Pensively, she drummed two fingers against her throat. One made as if to slip under her ribbon, but she realised, removed it. His gaze lingered on the spot where it had been. “If the rider isn’t heavy, and the horse doesn’t have any maker’s marks on its shoes…it could happen, but there’s no chance of it happening for an innocent reason.”

“You make a convincing argument. I was all for declaring shooting at His Majesty an innocent prank, but a light rider and unmarked shoes, _well_.”

Anne slanted him a glance a viper would’ve envied. “Is your habit for following me everywhere I go jeopardising the King yet, do you think? And do we really need a chaperone?”

Porthos had his own reasons for being there (the least of which being how much they unintentionally amuse him).

“He’s grown rather fond of you.”

She lifted a shoulder. “It happens.”

Athos cleared his throat, acknowledging the hit. “Certain philosophers,” he informed her. “Contend that there’s a form of intelligence which has to do with the heart, with people and their innermost selves. If there is, he has it. He sees you clearly.”

“And you don’t.”

“And you don’t have a heart.”

“The world would be so much simpler if I didn’t, would it not?” Unconsciously, she prodded the bite mark in her lower lip with her tongue, winced. “Stop me if you find sermons send you to sleep, but you and your – _pack_ is as good a word as any – would be vindicated for everything you’ve ever done to me. You could string me up and cut me down and hang me again as many times as you wished, and be revenged upon me at last.” Her voice was bright, brittle. “But though it’s a starved heart, and a poor heart, and an ignorant heart concerning anything other than hatred and despair, it’s still a heart. It still has the ability to be broken.”

She broke away from him, striding ahead, and almost as quickly slowed again, falling back into step beside him.

“If assault with my own saddle is the musketeers’ preferred method of protection, I’m astonished the worst the Queen got was a child.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I assume Aramis fell on Her Majesty in an attempt to protect her from something, and the rest is history. Considering your fame stems from shielding the innocent, the four of you could have bastards all over Paris.”

Athos pushes his face into his folded arms, breathing in the moistened air of the small square of space formed by this position. The best of a bottle gone, and he isn’t half as woozy as he’d like to be. His memory has an irritating tendency to sharpen when he drinks which, naturally, he forgets until it happens again.

“You warned Aramis,” he pointed out. “Do you still refuse to tell me why, or even what you were warning him against?”

“It would be a mistake to think we’re on the same side, Athos.” Milady turned up her collar against the strengthening breeze. “We have the same goal, temporarily at least, but that’s as far as it goes. You still have no idea what you’re involved in, and you won’t know until all of France does. Then you can sink or swim with the rest of them, that’s your business. We’re even.”

“But you did warn him.”

“He caught me off-guard.”

“You’re never off-guard.”

“You were never going to come to England,” she returned smartly. “And yet there you were, and here I am. Whether I tell you or not makes no difference: someone’s rolling the dice, and as it isn’t either of us, nothing either of us do will have any effect on what number comes up.”

He stared at her, at the long, frustrated length of her body. She lifted her chin, sharpening her profile, and let him. She was lying about everything, of course, but what good would truthfulness do? What could it do, other than dig them deeper into a pit which wouldn’t ever go down far enough to plumb the past, back-breaking and pointless? There was no future here, only what he did and she did and how the actions of one might impact on the other. They’d both play the games they were going to play anyway, moving around one another as they had done, wittingly or unwittingly, for so many years now.

Mood and weather changed, but what had been there could never not be there, so that was that.

“Did you try to kill the King?”

“No.”

“Then we should find out who did.”

But to believe she has a heart is to believe she makes mistakes, that some things she does to pull his strings weren’t intended to hurt. To believe she has a heart is to believe that she feels, that she’s fallible, and he scrapes his knuckles over the rough surface of the table rather than believe that. He does it a dozen more times, until they’re bristling with splinters and bleeding, until he’s drunk out of his mind, out of his soul.

He wanted her when he saw her with Buckingham, stubborn chin, greedy mouth, head lolling while she waited to be pleased. He wants her all the time, that’s the tragedy of it. He orbits the place where she was, and when he’s sick of that, drowns her in wine (but she floats like a witch, and dawn finds him half-dead from shame and regret).

**.**

Any other day, an assignation in a deserted corridor would be the stuff of newly wedded dreams. Any other day, d’Artagnan would’ve taken Constant’s firm ( _very_ firm) grip on his sleeve and her wide ( _very_ wide) and very blue eyes flicking towards the door and her quick ( _very_ quick) marching of him down a mirrored hallway and around a corner as a gift from God (he prays only sporadically, but when he does, it usually involves gratitude and Constance).

His wife, however, appears to be having some sort of turn.

“If someone were doing something bad to someone you know,” she begins. “Would you want to know?”

“That depends.” He’s not going to pass up the opportunity to plant his hands on either side of her waist, to draw her close, and she’s too distracted to stop him. “Is ‘someone I know’ you?”

“No.”

“Do I like the person I know?”

“No.”

“Is the something bad being done to someone I know but don’t like endangering France?”

“N – yes.”

“No or yes?”

“Possibly.”

“That isn’t no or yes!”

Thumping him lightly in the ribs with her clenched fist, Constance gives up on being enigmatic. “The Duke sent for me an hour or so ago, which seemed strange enough, since I’ve only seen him the few times the Queen has. The boy who was showing me the way was as skittish as a cat, took me up the wrong staircase, nearly ruined his breeches when it occurred to him he’d taken me up the wrong staircase…anyway.” She smiles ruefully, remembering. “It was a good half hour before we arrived, just as Milady was leaving. She said, ‘I did warn you, Your Grace, that I am no man’s creature’, and then she saw me, and said, ‘better never than late’, and told me to go in, and that ‘it’ wasn’t a joke without the punchline.”

“Any idea what that –”

“No.”

“So?”

“So I went in. The door was open, I didn’t knock.” Constance looks up at d’Artagnan, the interested, beautiful, critical, leonine face that stirs more than her heart, but her heart most of all. “Buckingham was there, with his back to me. He was drinking wine, and the matching glass to his was lying on the rug. It had been tipped over, and I saw…” It’s the deception that bothers her, though she isn’t always adverse to violence. It should be done openly, though, if it must be done at all. “Something white at the bottom of the glass, a powder which hadn’t quite dissolved – and then he saw it, the Duke, and picked it up, and added enough wine to dilute whatever the powder was. It must have been Milady’s glass.” She shifts slightly in his arms, torn. “I can’t prove it was poison, or that it was there at all. I’m not even sure I _want_ to.”

“Because it’s Milady.”

“Yes.”

“Because who hasn’t tried to murder Milady at some point.”

She raises her eyebrows.

“Alright, there are plenty of people who haven’t tried to murder Milady – not that we know that’s what the Duke was doing. He’s going to marry her, why would he try to – don’t answer that.” Absently, he digs his thumbs into the concealed Venus dimples on either side of Constance’s spine. She lets out a soft grunt of surprised pleasure, stops moving. “She was taken ill,” he confides. “On the ship from England. Aramis tended her.”

“She hasn’t been well since, the ladies have been whispering. It worries Athos.”

“You know?”

She shrugs. “We talk. He values you all too much to share feelings you’d only be disgusted by and incapable of understanding.”

“I wouldn’t –”

“But he’s your captain, and I’m a woman, and it’s different.” Reaching up, she presses hard on the knotted muscle at the back of his neck, returning both pleasure and pressure. “What do we do, d’Artagnan?”

“First, find out what the white powder is. Lemay managed it with Emilie’s soup, and you have all his receipts.”

“That means getting into the Duke’s rooms.”

“It does.”

“What’s second?”

“After we’ve found out what the powder is, deciding whether or not to tell Milady.” He wriggles out of her grasp, but only to enfold her hands in his own. They’re smaller, fairer and, in his opinion, more miraculous. “She could be ill anyway. She could’ve gotten some disease in England, or before she left, and…she could be dying, and _she_ may not know, but Buckingham might. Maybe it’s medicine. Maybe he’s trying to save her.”

Constance’s mouth scrunches up. “Not very likely, is it?”

“No.”

“What about the others?”

Though not an admirer himself, annoyed by Aramis’ attentions to her on the _Gabrielle_ and suspicious of the supposed good feeling between Porthos and Milady, d’Artagnan is a man of honour (he doesn’t always seem old enough to be a man of honour, but he is, and a musketeer to wit). He rolls his shoulder, the shoulder which bears his pauldron (his pride, his joy, his fleur-de-lis, equal in his heart only to Constance). “No,” he says determinedly. “No one can know until she does. It could be nothing, and Porthos claims she’s changed, but I wouldn’t want to be the Duke of Buckingham if she suspected him of poisoning her.”

“Or Athos,” she returns, recalling the blunt dagger she took from Treville’s old room but never gave back. She keeps it close, reassurance against men with different intentions to the Duke of Buckingham, not to beguile and manipulate. Anne, Her Majesty, her friend, is often in her mind: as strong as she is, she could’ve been violated under the noses of those who love her most. Milady is stronger still, but she could yet be killed.

“Or Athos,” d’Artagnan agrees. He lays his lips on the place where her fingers peek through his. “Though if it is poison, and she needs purging, she’ll need him.”

“If it is poison,” Constance replies. “She may need him anyway.”

They mall well be right, considering the fact that the following evening, an assassin is going to part company with the shadows of the street and become Milady’s shadow once again. The man in brown never rests, follows her to her old lodgings even now, but the man in black is thinking. The man in black objects to the bear and the wolf the grubby child in Le Havre told him of, to his quarry’s pack of protectors. He’s an artist, albeit it an artist of pain –

He will kill her next time.

He’d prefer not to have to shoot her through two musketeers.


	10. The Judas

_Your morality will not stand, musketeer._

She’d spoken thus to d’Artagnan, without wasting either breath or energy considering her own. To have morals, one had to have principles, and tears to shed over them – Anne had morals, and yet more questions now than she’d ever had before, except _before_ , before this, before this after. Her tears were spent, though, and not even for the livid, lovely face of the man who’d drawn back the curtain would she spill another drop.

And he was, and she’d always known he was, lovely to her.

Precious to her.

Vital to her, tethering her to life. Of course she’d survived the hanging, the hardships that had followed. That was what Buckingham failed to see, what d’Artagnan with his hot-headed, heartfelt disgust failed to see: she was more than darkness, and Athos was less than  light. They were bound together in the literal sense, incapable of moving to another place or another plane alone. That transcended reason itself, in addition to the ordinary kind of jealousy the Duke had hoped to provoke. It had led to joy, to security in the certainty that they would always have one another. These days, it drove him to drink, and her to toy with the ruby on her finger.

Milady steps off the Rue de Menteuse, pushes open the door of a narrow house with grilles over its four  windows without knocking. The frontage is smeared with soot and the remnants of a slapdash attempt at whitewash, but this is not the Louvre. Only the inside of the house matters.

“Madame,” she says cordially, addressing a bundle of rags huddled by the grate.

“You.” The old woman smacks her lips with satisfaction. “Is it?”

“The very same.”

Madame Clairmont turns blind, milky eyes away from the fire, rolling them towards the place where, by sound and an uncanny sense of the space around her, she can tell her guest is standing. Her bald head is covered by an ancient wig, and this downstairs room is evidently uncared for. Madame prefers it as is, prefers to intimidate would-be lodgers before offering up one of the three eminently suitable rooms on the upper floors (the blind old besom has a knack for guessing requirements, and a liking for guests with unorthodox callings).

“Up you go, then.” She flicks a long needle, wrapped twice around with wool, towards the staircase. There are gaps in it like holes between broken teeth. “Leave the rent on the table on your way out.”

A large, shabbily furnished room occupies the in-between floor of the narrow house with the lazy whitewashing, and the hair dangling from the keyhole suggests it hasn’t been disturbed. It may as well have been frozen, preserved in wax, and it takes her back to a time when hatred kept her warm and made up for the lack of a fire. This room isn’t welcoming, boasting only a bed, a chair, a basin, and two chests she’d had to have carried up herself. What it _is_ is riddled with nooks and crannies, loose floorboards, peeling squares of plaster with room behind them for slips of paper or pieces of cloth. The bed has hollow posts, and the spiders in the walls are vicious enough that the cockroaches stay away.

(Madame has better perception of what people need than most with their sight, albeit it at a usurious price for the neighbourhood).

Why come here, she wonders, and answers herself in almost the same moment. She’s looking for Milady, whose place this was. She’s looking for villainy, to disappear inside the folds of her red gown with the hood, to wash herself filthy with blood again. _Why not become the woman you believed me to be_? If she truly thought becoming scarlet again would take the heat from her cheeks, she would. She would burn this room to the ground as she’d burnt that fine house, the house with the room where he’d turned into her, even with a knife at his throat, and she’d held him because that was what her arms were meant to do. Five years, and he’d still reached for her, with a sigh and a sound that was unmistakeably ‘Anne’ exactly. Two years, and when they’re in a room together, it blazes up, and she has no tears to douse it.

Instead, she moves further into the room, seeking the past. Grey dust coats everything, resting like snowdrifts on the seat of the chair, the lids of both chests. She takes another step, swallowing stale air. She focuses on the toes of her shoes, which are stupid and elegant and embroidered in a shade of lavender so pale, it could be white.

But it _should_ be grey, covered in dust from the floorboards. The boards are clean, however, and blind women rarely sweep.

Anne’s head spins like a top, but she holds herself straight. Burning up with both fever and fear, the flush at her throat lighting her from within like a candle, she backs out of the room, making her way down the broken stairs.

“Madame Clairmont.”

“You.”

“Who’s been here?”

“Whoever paid to be here.” The knitting needles flash, reflecting back the flames in her cloudy irises. The abortionist blinks as if the light troubles her. “I don’t play favourites.”

Three shadows follow Milady at night, and one is differently dangerous. Him aside leaves two other, one of whom is clever enough to have bided his time, to have let her grow complacent – and complacent she had been, planning intrigues under the shelter of Buckingham’s wing, walking the streets as though she hadn’t changed, as if this were still her empire and its people still her subjects. One of these shadows is clever enough to take pot shots at her, to draw her out, to draw her here and teach the hairs on the back of her neck to rise. The crooked room tilts and she tilts with it, but her mind is quick and full of questions: the Queen. The Duke. Poison. Which? This attack of her malaise is the most conveniently timed yet, and the shadow will soon know she can’t run.

With trembling fingers and as much finesse as Aramis lacked the last time, Milady yanks off her necklace. Her chest swells, struggles with the drumbeat below her breastbone.

 _You follow her like her shadow, her protector_.

When she goes out onto Liars’ Street (not quite in the Court, but not quite far enough away to keep her mother’s memory far enough away), she sets her sights on the next house, green eyes jangling in their sockets. _Just until the next house_ , she tells herself.

She tells herself that her mother was a whore, but even whores die behind closed doors. She is more, so she will not die here. No, not here, not where her blood will water the cobbles.

Just until the next house.

Just until the next patch of shadow.

The man in black admires her apricot-coloured skirts for a moment. He moves silently, stalking, but makes sure his footsteps are loud enough to taunt her. He watches those skirts swish and shimmer, making ripe, round shapes. She has sweet white flesh, and her panic is delicious. She is a sweet white piece on the chessboard of Paris, and although he would never underestimate one who was as he is, he wishes he were close enough to smell her perfume. Women, he has found, are as tender as peaches, and the scent of despair before they’re even close to breaking is like fine wine.

(Treville had no words to describe Ernesto de la Vega because he is a priest, and his god is pain, and Hell hath no fury like his).

 _What hold does she have over you_?

Enough that Athos is, as ever, exactly where she expects him to be: propped in the doorway of a tavern of little note and less interest. His head is tipped back, baring his throat, and his eyes are closed. Idiot, to expose himself like that. Idiot, to let her bring him low, to let her bring him low when his being down may mean her being dead.

“Athos.”

His eyes open. They’re black in the dark. “Estranged,” he prompts. “Your word.”

“Fool,” she says cruelly, having forgotten any other manner of speaking to him. She braces her hand on the stone beside his head, the Duke’s glove with her fingers inside it (just as this is Madame de la Chapelle’s body, Sophy Durant’s, Anne de Breuil’s). “Buckingham is not the assassin’s target. I am.”

“You’re lying.”

“Why would I lie?”

“I don’t know.” His heavy head rolls towards her. She wishes he wasn’t so obviously drunk. “Why _do_ you lie?”

“Out of pride.” She answers truthfully, matter-of-factly, dispassionately. “Because I believe I am better than those who cut their teeth complaining about their lot, but never try to change it. Out of vanity, because I always knew I would have this face, and it would make men look at me and beg for me when I was old enough – and before. Out of fear, because it happens that I sometimes agree with you, that I am rotten to the core, that there is no changing, that my soul is past saving.” The words stick in her craw like vomit, so up they come, and out they come. “Out of love, because it made me blind, but not blind enough not to see you would take back your word and your love and never think of me again if you knew the truth.” She grips his shoulder with the hand not clutching at straws, only half-steadying herself. There’s truth in a touch. “You knew who I was before you saw what you saw today. You know I’m not lying now. I swear it, Athos.”

“There is nothing left between us.” Nothing but her eyes eating up her face. “There is nothing left to swear on.” Nothing but her pale blue glove, trapped between fabric and skin and between them. He wonders that she can’t sense it.

“Can you walk?”

“What?”

“You clearly have a fever, and we don’t have time for you to have a fever. Can you walk?”

“Yes.”

“Then we walk.” Then he grasps her too hard around the shoulders, and she him too hard around the waist. Sick in their own separate ways, they need each other (sick in the same way, they always need each other).

De la Vega manifests in the mouth of a passageway between two houses, a passage which ends in a gate which has fallen off its hinges. He possesses the mildest countenance imaginable: a small pair of watery blue eyes, straw-coloured hair streaked with grey, a strong chin, a narrow forehead. He puts back his hood and stands easily, the first drops of rain sliding down his long nose and departing at the tip. He was never a tall man, but Vargas has made him shorter. Padded stockings and tall boots cannot hide the strange twisting departures his legs make from the proper set of bones, evidence of their being broken and reset only to be broken again, perhaps a dozen times.

It’s unsurprising, therefore, that De la Vega is renowned for treating the limbs of his prey like tomatoes. He pricks them with his dagger, plunges them into boiling water, then slowly peels off the skin. He does this until his still living victims offer him anything in exchange for the singular honour of cutting off their own hands and feet.

“Milady de Winter.” He lisps slightly, in the Spanish style. “ _Capitán_. You would do better to leave than to stay.”

“If I leave now, it will be assumed that the shot that killed her was mine,” Athos points out, quite reasonably.

“I am not going to shoot her.”

“No?”

“Speak to me.” Anne has her back to the wall and her hand on her heaving stomach, and she objects very much to being ignored. “If you must speak.”

The Spaniard looks directly at her. “I am not going to shoot you, Madame. I am going to gut you.”

“Why?”

“To teach the Duke of Buckingham to choose his friends more wisely.” He pauses, delicately licks the tip of his little finger but smooths neither hair nor eyebrows. He licks, it appears, only to lick. “The death of his French mistress will show him the folly of allying himself with France over Spain.”

“I am not his mistress.”

“His whore, then. His filthy fucking Catholic _whore_.” Spittle flies from his lips, and for an instant he is a rabid dog, eyes bulging out of their sockets. A moment later, however, all is as it was, though he sucks on the finger he licked before. They’re safe, she thinks, as long as his leash doesn’t snap.

“Do you not serve a Catholic king, Señor? And does the great de Olivares not urge your king to consort with whores, lest he remember he has a wife – a _French_ wife, sister to a French king?”

As long as his leash is not _cut_.

The blade sighs out from between the laces of his sleeve, as thin and pale as a moonbeam.

“Hold your tongue, woman.”

His own is thick, glistening pink behind his teeth.

“Go home, assassin,” she taunts him. “Go back to your puppet-master and let him give you a tug.” She imagines strings and ropes, a cart beneath her unsteady feet. It seems she and Death have a standing engagement, and every fresh liaison inevitably reminds her of their first. “You won’t get a cock-stand over my grave.”

Athos makes an almost imperceptible sound of vexation, and de la Vega strikes. He rushes forward, moving not just over the cobbles but up the walls too, springing into the air and landing like a cat in the gap behind them. He seizes Anne by the hair and she thrusts an elbow into his stomach, to no effect. They wrestle for the knife, and she wraps her fingers around the grip. It’s set with studs which leave stigmata on her palm, drawing first blood. De la Vega’s hold on her hair pulls her head further back than her neck should allow, forcing Anne to gaze up at the stars. More stars burst into being when she tries to break his grip, and if she were alone, she would already be dead. The Judas Protestant priest would’ve gutted her, sated himself, lined up her organs beside her emptied carcass: a dainty dish to set before a duke.

But Buckingham isn’t here; Athos is, and he has a knife of his own. One riposte from de la Vega, though, and it skitters away down the alley, along with his own, which spins up and out of Milady’s bloody grasp. Somehow heartened by this, the Spaniard wraps a skein of hair around his victim’s throat. She jerks, wheezes, bubbles. Her heels hammer the ground. She feels him beginning to harden against her backside and knows he is the Devil indeed.

They perform a strange three man sarabande as Athos twists de la Vega’s collar, trying to throttle him with it, trying to pull him backwards. Anne is deafened by the thunder of blood in her ears at the increased pressure, kicking blindly behind until her foot connects, until she feels de la Vega’s right kneecap crumple. He goes down, but rises again in almost the same motion. His cheeks are lavender and the whites of his eyes have gone rosy, but with an almost impressive determination, he seizes and slams her head into the wall. She feels the gush of blood rather than the blow, the rush of it down her temple. She spits at him, spraying red. He slaps her with an open palm, and her body bounces as she hits the ground. It finally revolts, and she pukes crimson before she can pull herself to her knees.

Athos wraps his arm around the Spaniard’s neck like a lover, and the fight is over.

“Don’t kill him,” she rasps. The fever has passed, but all that means is that she can feel the beating. The two men swoop up and down before her eyes, black and red and grey. Something is probably ruptured. She has to swallow blood in order to speak. “He’ll talk, if only you promise to torture him once he has.”

De la Vega turns his stoved in head, crusted with clotted blood. “Yes, save me from your shadow.” A smile splits his face like a sunbeam, opening minuscule cuts at the corners of his lips. There are scars there too, and now they bleed fresh. “Who else will be willing to commend you to God – and fuck the hole where your head was – if I am dead? _Him_?”

Finally drawing his pistol, the captain of the musketeers smashes it into the assassin’s forehead. And again. And again. Over and over he brings the buttstock down, killing him again and again, killing him when he is past dead, when the eyes have no orbits and the nose is a pulp and the mouth is a juicy wreck, stretched in a snarl over shattered teeth. Athos is silent, and so is Anne. She watches, seeing no halo of light behind him, nothing to set him above. She watches his wrist tremble, and when, for no apparent reason, he slows and then stops, she watches him still.

“You knew who I was before you saw what you saw today,” he repeats, her words, and each like a wound. He’s dark and slick with rain, and she examines him and the mess he’s made without pity or judgement.

“You are not this.”

“I am.”

“No.”

“ _Yes_.”

“You are _not_ this.” She’s black and red and grey too, and blue. She struggles forward, to his side, and their colours merge in her blurry sight. She grabs him by the ears to make him to look at her, to look at her with eyes gone opaque, de la Vega’s pulp and peel between them. “This was not the game we play. This was duty.” He’d killed her for duty, for killing Thomas de la Fère (who’d been no less of a beast than de la Vega) for love. She’d become a beast herself, for love. “I commend you for it, Captain.”

They’re silent for a while, locked together in that quiet way.

“I thank you for it, Madame.” Her cheek is already starting to puff. He understands the indignity of that for a woman who has her face.

There are footsteps approaching, ringing on the cobbles, but she can’t yet turn away. “You could’ve let him live.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because you asked for his life.”

“So?”

“I couldn’t allow myself to believe you’ve changed, but you asked for his life.” There’s a hair’s breadth between them, but Buckingham is between them. De la Vega is between them. “You asked for mercy. _You_.” The musketeers are between them, and bodies, and their own bruises and bruised pride.

“Me,” she says.

“Buckingham will take that from you.”

“And what would you give me instead?”

He doesn’t react when she puts her hand inside his shirt, the fingers cold and battered and beautiful. He doesn’t flinch, since the pace of his heart isn’t something he can do anything about, or the gooseflesh which rises at her touch. She finds the edge of what there is left between them, her favour, her challenge. She strokes it lightly, and now he does flinch (because he was a coward the day d’Artagnan married Constance, because the answer to her question is _everything_ ). If he gave, if he gave in, his surrender would be unconditional. He would be hers again, and that is not the game they play.

She’s black and red and grey, baptised by blood and rainwater, waiting.

“Porthos,” warns Athos, who was a coward the day d’Artagnan married Constance, who is a coward still. His friend’s chivalry is bordering on legendary; he must’ve followed her.

Silently, Anne wraps his bloody fists in the folds of her apricot-coloured skirts.


	11. The Benefactress

Milady has no intention of being coddled (particularly by Constance d’Artagnan, ministering angel to His Majesty’s musketeers), but it doesn’t appear that she has a choice. With her red-brown hair braided for bed and the tip of her tongue protruding between her teeth, Constance carefully sponges away the blood on Anne’s temple and, for once, looks her age. By society’s standards, she’s old enough to have had a dozen children – by Anne’s, she’s too young to have been married once, let alone twice. She’s capable, but she could be a better seamstress; Aramis stands close to, and neither woman disputes his right to be there.

“At least four stitches,” is Constance’s assessment. She rinses her hands in a pewter bowl, then the cloth. The water is already rosy. “Small ones, though.”

“Get it over with.” Milady’s own hands are steadier her nurse’s. “And get me something to drink.”

Constance gives Aramis a meaningful glance but stays silent, gathering up her bowl and cloth and collection of salves before disappearing out onto the landing. She returns shortly afterward with a cup of brandy and a smile that doesn’t touch her eyes, though worry creases her forehead. Aramis takes a knee beside Anne’s chair.

“This will hurt. Are you brave?”

“What a stupid question.” The brandy roars down her raw throat, forming a pool that's half sickness and half courage in her stomach.

“Then you won’t struggle? Won’t try to turn your head?” His tone is almost teasing, and that warms her more than the brandy. So much darkness surrounds them, she thinks, those gone to fight the Spanish, those behind left in Paris, those who can’t quite believe they’ve survived this night. It’s only fair that Aramis finds it entertaining to have her in his power, and she doesn’t forget his care of her on the passage from England.

“I won’t feel it,” she murmurs, and she doesn’t. The numbness she’s been doing her best to run from chases the brandy burn, and for now, she welcomes it. One thumb rests on the curve of her cheek, steadying his hand, and from time to time he chafes the bruised skin, and she doesn’t feel that either. He takes his time lining up each insertion and excision, ensuring the gouge where de la Vega knocked her into the wall will heal neatly. The memory of his words will linger, however, and take the place of the rasp of the rope around her neck if she’s ever quiet enough in herself to sleep again (and so, to dream).

“A nasty cut,” Aramis remarks, tying off. “But once it’s gone, it’ll be gone for good.”

“Nothing is ever gone for good, Monsieur Aramis.”

His elegant brows lift, but he doesn’t reply. He doesn’t rise from her side either, and eventually she shifts beneath his scrutiny and demands, “What?”

“Madame?”

“ _Milady_. You evidently have something to ask me.” She’s trying very hard not to touch her face or her throat. The former stings, and the latter has never stopped paining her.

The laughter leaves his face, but it doesn’t leave it cold. Perhaps saving her beauty has gone some way towards proving he’s not a curse on all women (or perhaps he was already coming back to life anyway). “Athos,” says Aramis.

“What about him?”

He’s alive, which is why things yet have shape and colour. She’d deny this, naturally, if anyone asked.

“He killed the assassin?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“With his fists.” Her countenance is as smooth as a counterpane. “And the butt of his pistol.”

Athos’ friend flinches. “I see.”

But Athos’ wife experiences a fierce, horrible joy which heats her through as much as any liquor. There’s a wildness in her which will always be in her, and she’ll always take some pleasure in the deaths of her enemies. That pleasure is ordinarily muted when they die by a hand other than hers, from age or disease or another finger on the trigger, but that isn’t so with de la Vega. That is what Athos offers her, the card he has to play against the inevitability of Buckingham making her merciless: he is a man of honour, a man well thought of by his men and his king and God Himself (presumably), and he destroyed de la Vega, denying him the luxury of a swift, soldierly death. He’d made a solemn vow, and he’d kept it. He hasn’t been true or cleaved to her in any other way – nor she to him – but he’d protected her, which was more use to her than his being faithful. “Where is he?”

“Captain’s quarters.” Aramis had been looking past her, but when he turns his head, his gaze is clear (bright and black and interested, like an amiable bird’s). Her supposition was correct – he’s already halfway to healed after Marguerite’s death, healing her aside. “For you,” he prompts. “He killed a man with his fists _for you_.”

“And the butt of his pistol,” she demurs. “And for France.”

Because the truth is hers (theirs). Porthos saw what he saw, but Porthos came out of the gutter like her, and like her, he knows what drives a civilised man to behave like an animal. She’s damned if she’ll give this tender-hearted libertine a window into her soul, however. She’s felt enough for one day.

“I’m going to see him.” She has to use the back of her chair to stand, but stand she does. “You ought to go ahead and make sure he’s decent. D’Artagnan would swear I had immoral designs on a fencepost, and it’s much easier to plead innocence when everyone has their clothes on.”

“ _License my roving hands_ ,” Aramis quotes. “Or something like that.”

A smile curves her swollen lips, and his respond likewise. “ _As souls unbodied_ , _bodies unclothed must be_.”

“Except in the case of Athos.”

“Or a fencepost.”

D’Artagnan has his arms folded and his back against the linenfold panels of the door to the captain’s rooms, guarding it like a single-headed Cerberus. Milady isn’t surprised by his being there, only by his lack of objection to _her_ being there. He follows her into the closet-sized anteroom, and she stares shamelessly at him so he won’t notice her gathering herself, wiping her palms on her inner sleeves. His skin and his uniform are a similar shade of tanned brown, equally supple, and she knows the shift of bones underneath that skin. She astonished herself by truly wanting him that first time (and second, and third), but her arousal for him is a calculated thing – if she puts her mind to feeling it, she does. Otherwise, she feels only mild interest, mild annoyance and, occasionally, mild affection.

“Milady.”

“Constance was very kind,” she informs him.

With a slight inclination of that pretty head, he opens the door to the bedchamber. “Milady,” is all he says.

The unwelcoming emptiness of the room speaks more to Athos’ character than to his lack of resources. He’s often here of an evening, if pink-tinged wine glasses and treatises on war and books of Greek philosophy are anything to go by. Anne, pausing in the doorway, taking her time, counting the volumes and titles. She recalls how rare a thing it is to actually see him read, though he could recite most of these word for word, regardless of language. He once offered to teach her Latin or Greek, but she didn’t want it. She speaks English fluently, and more than a little Spanish, but languages such as those set men above other man, and all women who refuse or are denied education. She’s no Ninon de Larroque; she likes the French names for things.

Her gaze moves to the bed, by far the largest piece of furniture in the room. It has no hangings and just one pillow, which is at present propped up against the unadorned headboard. Propped up against that is Athos, his grey eyes full and empty at the same time.

“You,” she notes. “Are not dead.”

“Neither,” he replies. “Are you.” He’s had as much brandy as she has, with approximately the same amount of affect. His shirt is clean, but his jawline is puffy, and there’s a cut across the bridge of his nose.

“Does that please you?”

“Does it please _you_?”

She comes into the room proper, taking an uninvited seat on the edge of the bed. Her skirts are silent now, too heavy with blood and muck to swish. “Yes.” She’s careful to orient herself away from him, towards the candle. The air smells musky and male, but she ignores this. Instead, she examines her left hand, turning it over in the air. The nails are still oval, mostly clean. “But then, I’ve never had your talent for self-destruction.”

“Or, apparently, my taste for it.”

The candle lights her profile, which is angular and unbeautiful. He keeps reminding himself of that, but he aches everywhere. More brandy, perhaps. More time. “‘Mine be the glory and the consequences’, wasn’t that the family motto?”

“The first part, certainly.”

“Then your ancestors were either unrealistic or idealistic.” She flips her hand back over, hiding the vulnerable palm. “I assume unrealistic. Glory always has its consequences.” Her fingers close in a fist, clenching around something which isn’t there.

They sit sans conversation for a while. He keeps his back against that one pillow, she keeps her back to him, and they both suffer (but at least that means they aren’t alone). He traces the nape of her neck with his eyes, remembering the sudden bend which means yielding, the soft fall of her hair. She kills de la Vega over and over again in her mind, stabbing and shooting and strangling him over and over again, and then she imagines closing the distance between the woman she is and the man who loved her as she was with a bloody mouth.

Maybe because that distance is less than it used to be, it’s she who speaks first.

“Everything goes in circles.”

Athos blinks, but languorously. It wouldn’t do to show too much interest. “How so?”

“He's you,” she answers, with an inclination of her head towards the door to the anteroom, the door which leads to d’Artagnan. "Or you as you might've been. If you hadn’t been such a fool. If you’d gone back to Pinon and married Catherine and unified your estates. If you’d had enough in one part of your life that nothing else mattered, and other people could be hurt for more than an instant, but not you.” The cut on her forehead glitters with thread and aches like the devil. “But you were a fool. I wanted money and a way out and I would’ve gone with you anyway, but you – you were such a fool. An innocent.” She means that she was a fool, and an innocent too, though she’d have sworn her innocence was lost long before she met him. She means that she went with him to Pinon because the sound of his voice made her heart swell in her fussy white bodice, within the confines of her cheap dress, and she’ll never forgive him for it. “It was Paris, I was…it was understood. Another man would’ve understood.”

“Another woman,” he observes, apparently captivated by the candle flame. “Might've mentioned it.”

“Yes,” she agrees, despair clogging her throat. “And the circle of you and I would have been broken.”

“It never would’ve begun.”

“And your children would have Catherine’s hideously coloured hair, and Louis would be celebrated as a king have wisdom beyond his years, and the world would be a good and honest place without enough cruelty in it to fill a piss pot.”

As if to bring home the strangeness of this night, Athos cracks a laugh. “I like this world of yours.”

“Of course you do,” she responds, too quickly, too sharply. “It’s a world without shadows.”

 _It_ ’ _s a world without me_ is what she means. She’d have taken his money, swallowed her bitterness that there was nothing more. He’d have given her too much anyway. They would never have seen one another again, and the idea of it makes him _laugh_ – so for all she should thank him for tonight, for her life, for the cuts and bruises she has instead of a missing head, she clamps her teeth together.

He sees. He knows. He wishes he had the heart to comfort her, and the will to let that be that. He wishes he had the spine, the stomach.

“His Grace will tear Paris apart if you’re not back by dawn, I don’t doubt.”

Milady (because it is Milady, the skin stretched taut over the high cheekbones) rises smoothly from the bed, her knees no longer shaking. “As if he’d think to find me here.” With a curl of contempt to her lip. “As if anyone would think to find anything worth the seeking _here_.”

Porthos meets her at the door to the yard, falls into step beside her. Dawn is already pinkish grey on the horizon, the night scudding into early morning.

“He told you to watch over me.”

“I would’ve offered anyway.”

“I would’ve declined.”

“I would’ve ignored you.”

There’s still a scab on her mouth from where he knocked her into her saddle, protecting her from the wild, wide shots de la Vega had used to lure her back to Paris.

“Why do you care, Porthos?” She wonders, removing her gloves despite the air being cold enough to make her fingers twitch.

“Where we’re from, you and me,” he answers. “It’s not as easy as right and wrong, is it? You’re marked no matter what you’ve done because of where you’re from, as a thief or a murderer…”

“Or a prostitute, or a beggar, or a prospective duchess with a salacious past…”

He grins. “Not a lot of those about these days.”

But they’ll be on different paths soon, her and her salacious past, and the best part of it as well. She has to thank him for tonight, for her life. She has to thank him for the strength of the man at her shoulder, for his willingness to forgive.

Because she was romantic once, she folds one glove neatly into a square, tossing the other to the wilting musketeer on guard duty at this late (or early) hour. He has to fumble to catch it, and Porthos huffs in either amusement or derision (or both).

“For the captain,” she tells him. “To add to his collection.”

De Wardes has pale brown hair and eyes to match. “Anything else, Milady?”

“Adsumus.” Not _I am here_ , but _we are here_. “And that I absolve him, at last.” Her neck is bare to the wind, white and red and, from hereon, a little more defenceless. She supposes that is her cross to bear, if not her only burden.

The man bows slightly, and they depart.

**.**

Aramis meant to make better friends with his own bed, but he tends to intend more than he acts, and it’s ever been his weakness. He sits in the office while night becomes day around him, remembering Doctor Lemay and using the unfortunate man as an excuse to pluck out, clean, pat dry and organise his collection of needles. He whistles his way through _Flow My Tears_ but otherwise works in silence, absorbed by the repetitive task. Only when he finishes and stretches, greeting the new day with a jaw-cracking yawn and outflung arms, does he realise how far those names – Isabel, Adele, Marguerite, Anne – have been from his mind. In realising it, he braces himself for the guilt; none comes. He’s tired beyond belief, but it’s not unpleasant.

“Captain? Athos?”

Perhaps he feels human again because in reality, he’s fallen asleep, slumped over the bowl of water. Perhaps he’s dreaming now: that’s the only explanation that would make this make sense. _She_ can’t be a dream, though, not with the priceless fall of gold on either side of her flower petal face, with the blue hood pulled up over her head. Even the dark gown can’t make her seem more sturdy, less like an angel in borrowed clothing.

“Aramis.”

She’s a queen, not an angel, and he can do nothing but stare at her.

She knows he may always see her from under the visor of a knight, as a lady of legend, a poem, an ideal. They brought that particular tower tumbling down a long time ago, but it’s not as if she can order him to treat her like every other woman. His view is somehow different to the way Rochefort saw her, however, without the halo of a Madonna, nor the gilding of an unselfish virgin when he can be sure that she can be angry and hungry and shameless too. For her own part, she sees Aramis as she saw him once before, with his head bent and his face ablaze, caught up in some snare inside himself that she longs to free him from. Anne of Austria stands with her hand on the door, the pulse jumping in her wrist.

“Why are you here?” No ‘Your Majesty’. No greeting. No open arms.

She straightens her spine. “I received your note.”

“My note?” Aramis pushes a hand back through his hair, becoming aware all at once that he’s been wearing the same clothes for two days, that there’s blood in the creases of his palms and that she’s _here_ , in the garrison, in this room, divine punishment for his forgetting to regret her. “I didn’t write you a note.”

Anne comes forward, into the room, stands before him with no crown, no command. “You wrote me a note,” she insists. “One of my ladies delivered it, I…” She glances away, towards the window, upward, as though looking anywhere is better than looking at him. There was a light in her expression, but it’s flickering. “Milady de Winter,” she explains drily. “The note asking me to come to you was given to Diane to pass on to me by Milady de Winter. A peace offering, she said.”

“It was.” But not to her.

She turns luminous eyes on him, but the look in them is steady. She’s earth as well as air, and fire and water too. “There was a time,” she says carefully, weighing each word before she speaks it. “When being alone with you like this was something like my idea of Heaven.”

His gaze follows the line of brow and chin and the Cupid’s bow of her lip, over her shoulders, along her nose. He can smell her perfume. He can smell her sweat, or that of the woman who wore that dress before her. “Only something like Heaven? Anything can be something like Heaven, Your Majesty.”

She narrows those eyes imperceptibly. “There was a time, then, when being alone with you like this _was_ my idea of Heaven.”

He brushes the hair back from her neck, cups her throat between his hands. His thumbs move in gently spirals around the points of tension below her neat ears, but that look is still steady, and though he’s close to laughing with the impossibility of the moment, she doesn’t smile.

“Heaven,” he counters, the furthest away from Douai he’s ever been. “Is bleak and grey by comparison.”

“Blasphemy,” she murmurs, and the corners of her mouth curve up.

The Queen of France takes a handful of Aramis’ shirt, and maybe he kisses her, and maybe she kisses him, but it’s entirely irrelevant to both. Sunlight creeps across the floor, not yet touching them but warming the small, still room. Anne wraps her arms around his neck and presses herself into him, into his chest, into the space beneath his chin. He curls around her, encloses her in himself. She tugs at his lip with her sharp white cat’s teeth, tasting him once again with her pointed pink cat’s tongue, and they drink deep of each other, reacquainting each sense with sensation, glorying in each other in the time that they have. Their passion is there, as it has always been there, but it isn’t alone. Their affection for one another is bone deep after the sacrifices made on both sides, their respect mutual. She’s younger in years but older in spirit than he’ll ever be, and in that way (if not in any other), they are equal.

Her cheeks are flushed when he draws back, as bright a ruby as the gilt of her shining hair. “I wouldn’t,” he begins. “Not for all the world.” _I would not have you sad for all the world_ , she’d said, months ago. They are all the world in this room, all the planets and the constellations.

“But you require news of my son, so his mother will have to wait.”

“I – yes. If his mother would be kind enough to wait just a little longer.”

“Well.” She can tease as well as he can, and starts by winding short strands of his hair around her fingers. “Strong. He broke the little Nuremberg timepiece His Majesty gave him to play with – a lovely thing, but certainly not meant to be played with. He outgrows clothes faster than they can be ordered. He is wonderfully fat.” And she’s wonderfully smug, as only a mother can be.

Aramis leans his forehead against hers. “Your son is well.” The sun is growing hot on his back. “And strong.”

“ _Our_ son,” she corrects, closing her eyes.

**.**

Constance glitters with joy this morning, and the high collar of her gown brushes her hair with snowy lace. She doesn’t at all resemble someone who spent half the night on a mission of mercy, and even the King gives her a second glance as she glides over to d’Artagnan’s post by the door.

“The Duke isn’t here.”

“What?”

“Wake up!” She taps him gently on the cheek, runs her thumb over his lips to make up for the minor trespass. “Milady was sick again last night. Athos said that when she found him, she was so sick she could hardly walk.” And it had taken a time, effort and a good deal of patience to get him to divulge even that.

“So?”

“So the poison, if he is poisoning her, is probably still in his rooms!”

Behind his back, out of sight of his wife, d’Artagnan makes a gesture she would not approve of. “Constance,” he starts cautiously. “We have no idea how long Buckingham will be away for. It could be for a half hour or a day or – and if he is poisoning her, which I only have your word for – which is obviously good enough for me, but it won’t be for – he’ll have hidden the poison somewhere it’ll take more than however long he’ll be away for to find!”

“D’Artagnan.” She lowers her chin. “Do you love me?”

 _No_ , he thinks, and then grudgingly, “Yes.”

“Then _help_ me.”

God help both of them, she thinks, if Athos hears of it.


	12. The Moor

“I was born in a brothel, in the smallest room of a brothel. My mother had three kerchiefs stuffed in her mouth so she wouldn’t disturb the clientele, not that they were much of a clientele. The house was cheap, and so was she. She was the youngest there, and much in demand. She had yellow hair. I was told I’d ruined her prospects.”

“And your father?”

“I assume I have his face. I never looked like her, not even as a child. I was allowed to stay with her because I liked to hide – under the bed, in the chest at the foot of the bed, in corners, in the rafters if no one caught me climbing up – and because she got her figure back quickly. She went up in the world, and took the house with her. She conveniently forgot about me when business was bad, and I starved. When she was entertaining five men a night, all of them titled, she’d send the boy out to buy dainties. I would eat until I was sick, but she’d never touch a bite – for her figure, to preserve her teeth. I still have no taste for sweet things.”

“But you left her.”

“She left me. She died of some kind of clap, and then there was a boy, a younger son…from him I learnt what was expected of a young woman by a young man, no matter what he’d claimed to the contrary. I left the brothel where I’d been born. I left her people, those fat old whores with too much rouge and loosened laces. I became a thief because it was the best option available, and then I learned to lie because fat old men give more money for empty promises than I could ever have taken from their pockets.”

“And then you met him.”

“And then, I met him – at a reception I barely managed to get into, they could smell I wasn’t one of them. He was talking too loudly, he used to do that. He was so interested in everything, so intrigued by what was actually around him and what he’d only read about in his books. He wanted to drag me along beside him like a spaniel when he realised how little of France I’d seen. He made me talk about Paris until I was hoarse. He looked inside my head and plucked the thoughts right out of it. He didn’t see the outside. He was too naïve to notice that my dress didn’t fit.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

Milady has been fixing matching rubies in her ears, rubies which match the ruby on her finger. They swing when she turns away from the mirror, catching the light. It seems unlikely she looks like her father. It seems unlikely she looks like anyone other than herself, with her hair coiled on top of her head in a pattern of braids and snakes.

“In case someone kills me someday,” she says, as if it hardly matters. “The truth dies with me unless someone else knows it all, start to finish.”

Porthos has gone without rest or food as long as she has, but that slows him down about as much as it does her, and her forehead is smooth and shining, untroubled. Trouble is there between them, but he wouldn’t know how to comfort her if he tried, so he doesn’t (and it’s not comfort she needs; her life doesn’t frighten her, to hear her tell it, and nor does her death). He stands to attention, planting his feet firmly on the elegantly polished floor, resting one hand on the hilt of Treville’s sword. He’s ready and able, and death has passed him by thus far, and that’s his kind of comfort.

He isn’t foolish enough, however, to think that she’s confessing to him because she wants _him_ to hear it. He’s just the messenger.

“Should you really be up and about?” She’s made a neat fringe of ringlets over her forehead, but they don’t quite cover the marks left by a mad, dead Spaniard.

“I have urgent business with the King.”

“You might’ve mentioned –”

“Porthos, you’re my guard, not my gaoler.”

“Aren’t I? It’s not as if you’re paying me.”

She almost smiles. Her gown is a silky pale brown today, and the rubies are even bloodier by contrast. She’s wrong in pale, appropriate colours – Aramis might be eloquent enough to explain why, but Porthos isn’t. It’s as though she doesn’t have any edges, as though she doesn’t end. She blends into walls and upholstery and other court ladies, pretending to be something she’s not: the same. She isn’t the same, and no amount of hiding between the sheets of a bed instead of under it or putting herself in the power of men will make her so.

Them, they’re the same. They’re strangers in their own city, bastards from the Court of Miracles. He is what she could’ve been, if someone had only believed.

Anne meets his eye. Her mouth is a white line, lips compressed to nothing. “It’s not as if I need to pay you,” she remarks acerbically. “You have more of me than anyone else now.” She dabs flower water onto her neck, behind her ears. “You’re the only one of the  _honourable_ ,  _upright_ , _chivalrous_ musketeers who doesn’t hate me too much to listen.”

“He doesn’t hate you.”

But she won’t stop hating herself long enough to hear it. The glove was a mistake, both gloves, both messages they sent. Going to him was a mistake, sitting beside him, smelling brandy and blood and forgetting her destiny was to be a duchess, not to sit beside him, not to forgive him when she can’t forgive herself. Thomas, and Richelieu, and Buckingham. Olivier, a name she mumbles sometimes if she happens to be in a church because that doesn’t count, does it, not when even he doesn’t use it. _Olivier d_ ’ _Athos de la Fère_ , she mutters, and it numbs her lips, and there is no God to hear it.

Porthos follows her out into the corridor when her toilette is complete and she is utterly Milady again, his hand still on his sword.

**.**

Constance beams at the unguarded double doors, gleaming with fresh paint. “It’s a good thing Milady is the beginning and end of the Duke’s entourage,” she comments. “Not that the Red Guard would pose much of a difficulty.”

“You mean it’s a good thing we’re all shirking our duty to protect the Duke, and technically betraying the King by shirking our duty to protect him,” d’Artagnan gripes. “Or the musketeers would pose a very great difficulty. Huge. Enormous.”

“May I remind you that this was _your_ plan? Stop being such an old woman about it.” She walks swiftly but cautiously ahead of him, checking over her shoulder to be sure he’s following. He’d follow her into Hell, a fact of which she is blissfully aware. Accordingly, she beams at him, nips her lip, turns back to the doors and eases the right one open. They slip through together, and he closes it behind them.

“So you’re the Duke of Buckingham.” Constance’s flush seems all the brighter beside her lace collar. “And your only confidante is a spy and assassin, only she isn’t really your confidante, because you’re poisoning her. Where would you hide it?”

“With all my other poisons.”

She gives him a look. “Be serious.”

“I am! How do you stop something sticking out, attracting attention? Hide it in the place where it’s supposed to be.” He casts around for an example, and a bowl of fruit takes his fancy. “If you wanted to hide an apple, an apple which was, for whatever reason, very important to you, where would you put it? Not in some secret place, where the spy and assassin who isn’t really your confidante might stumble across it, and wonder why you’d keep an apple with your most precious things if it weren’t precious to you too? Where would you put the apple, Constance?”

“I would put it,” she says slowly, warming to the idea. “On an apple cart, with dozens of other apples. I’d put it exactly where it’s supposed to be.”

“Then let’s find his apple cart.”

The Duke has made himself at home in the ambassador’s rooms: there are candles everywhere, far more than even a scholar would need, and everything has fussy little accents that certainly weren’t added by Jerome Weston. Swathes of fabric are flung over the pieces of furniture whose carpentry or upholstery fail to please him, and the stack of books on the table before the fire, spines out, edges aligned, are embellished with gold or silver or coppery Russian red gold, its price beyond diamonds. This is not a room intended for receiving visitors, for Buckingham’s hypochondria is easy to divine. Many of the candelabra are arranged around His Grace’s scales, his small collection of plants, his racks of tinctures. Most are nothing more than herbs distilled in water, some more clouded than others, some completely opaque.

Some are powdered.

Constance sees what d’Artagnan’s seen, and hurries across the room, heels tapping out her anxiety. She stretches out her hand, letting it hover in the air over the fifty or so miniature bottles, each fitted with a tiny dropper or spoon.

“There’s more than one white bottle.”

“So take them all.”

She shoots him an agonised glance. “What if he notices?”

He doesn’t have an answer to that, only a shrug of the shoulders. This was his plan, but he doesn’t like it. The room smells overly feminine, Milady’s newer orange flower and lavender scents blending with something heavier, headier, more Eastern. Buckingham could have terrible taste in perfume, or he could be doing alchemy, or summoning the Devil. There’s no way of being certain, but what he can be certain of is that things won’t end well if they’re found here. The Duke is more dangerous than any of the musketeers anticipated, striking from behind a smokescreen of manufactured charm and materialistic self-obsession. “At least he won’t be able to do any more poisoning, if that’s what he is doing.”

Still, she hesitates. “But what if he blames Milady?”

“Would that honestly be such a bad thing? Constance.” D’Artagnan gently takes hold of her arm, as if he might pull it away from the rack of bottles. “Would it be so terrible if she were out of our lives forever?”

“I’ve been thinking about that.” Her eyes are on her outstretched arm, on his fingers encircling it, overlapping it. “I thought about that last night. I thought perhaps it would be a fair trade, her life for Athos’ – but what sort of a life would it be for him, d’Artagnan?” Just as gently, she shakes him off, shaking her head as she does so. “What would he have left? Of his own, I mean. Everything he has, everything he is, he shares with you three…except her.” She swallows. “Apart from –”

“Let’s not talk about ‘apart from’,” her husband interjects. “‘Apart from’ was a long time ago.”

“Not for Athos,” she returns. “And Athos and Milady’s ‘a long time ago’ may as well be yesterday.”

He takes a moment to consider this, then goes on stubbornly, “Everything we have, we give to him too.”

She turns those eyes on him, blue and flat like a painted vault of Heaven. “One day,” Constance tells him. “The Dauphin will be a king, and he’ll need Aramis more than he’ll ever need the man he believes is his father. One day, Porthos will stop feeling pulled in two directions by his past – which he does, by the way. You’ll be a father one day.”

His breath catches. “You’re not –”

“No,” she reassures him, slightly too quickly. “But you won’t all just be musketeers forever. Even Captain Treville wasn’t _just_ a musketeer forever. Athos has to have something of his own too, and he’s past the point of wanting anything else.”

“The Comtesse –”

“Wasn’t enough,” she supplies. “He wants what the Comte de la Fère had, and if not that, then as close as he can get.” Ruefully, she adds, “It can’t just be any comtesse.”

D’Artagnan is almost jealous. He could be, with a pinch more provocation. “How can you understand him like that?” He demands. “ _I_ don't understand him like that!”

“I knew him before I knew you.” Constance lifts her chin, as if that explains everything. She begins selecting bottles, tucking them into her sleeve. “Now, shall we get out of here before the Duke comes back? I didn’t enjoy being nearly executed last time, and I’m not convinced it’ll be any better this time around.”

**.**

“Your Majesty.”

“Milady.” The King addresses her with pursed lips, puckering his mouth as if she were a slice of lemon. The knot of noblemen around him, dressed in short capes and gold braid like toy soldiers, sneer in imitation.

“I come to beg an audience with you, sire.”

Louis rolls his eyes upwards. The weather’s finally turned, and he’s seated in the rose garden under a dazzlingly blue sky. The King must have roses, so the bushes are regularly ripped up and replanted when they aren’t in flower, replaced by healthy plants shipped in barrels from Turkey. Their perfume is syrupy, citrusy, rich. The carved legs of his chair rest on a carpet of multi-coloured petals. “Oh you do, do you?” He’s cupping the fat head of a blossom in his hand, and twists it right off when she doesn’t bat an eyelid at his display of temper. “Very well.” He waves his hand at the faithfully jeering courtiers, which they take as their cue to assume ordinary expressions again. “Go back to – to whatever it is you do. I daresay you can do it well enough without me.”

They protest (‘of course not, Your Majesty’, and ‘never, Your Majesty’, and ‘His Majesty has been deceived in our regard for him’), but depart.

Milady remains where she is. She remains unmoving, with her shoulders down, her spine straight. The wind stirs her artistically watermarked gown, and Porthos decides again that she looks wrong in it, and also, that she’s up to something.

“Your sister,” she begins. “Sends her fondest wishes.”

That would be because she _is_ up to something.

“My dear Milady. My good, loyal…Milady.”

And she’s up to whatever it is in front of Porthos because the truth would die with her otherwise, and Athos would never know all of her, but he will if Porthos knows to tell him.

Louis is on his feet at once. He strides forward, takes both of her hands, presses them ardently between his. It’s a far cry from the last time he touched her, but His Majesty doesn’t dwell on such things, and Milady forgets the bodies she gave hers to for greed, for influence, for a safe place to sleep in unsafe times.

“And how is England? How does England without the Duke?”

“Well,” she replies. “Her Majesty is on better terms with King Charles in his absence. They’re building together, Inigo Jones was often at court while I was there. I made sure that Lucy Hay didn’t like me and that Buckingham did: their relationship has been undeniably damaged, and he may sever ties with her for good if she falls out of favour with Her Majesty. The Hay woman’s hold on your sister is looser.”

“Building? What do I care about building? I didn’t send you to England to find out about building, Milady.” How like a child he is; how like his own child, whose tantrums come and go as quickly. “Forgive me,” says the King a moment later, apparently surprising even himself. “This is a task no man could do, and yet I chastise you for being a woman in its execution. You play a larger role in this war than I do.” He squeezes her hands once more before releasing them, plucking another rose, twirling it between his fingers. “I am sorry your own plans came to nothing. Two pairs of eyes and two pairs of ears at Whitehall would have been better than one, but I doubt you would have grown as close to Buckingham as you have if your heart were clearly elsewhere.”

“Not my heart, Your Majesty. Merely my inclination.” Of course he’d suspected, as she’d meant him to, that the escort she’d mentioned was a lover who might serve him as well as servicing her. Of course he hadn’t even come close to the truth (Louis de Bourbon is not Armand Richelieu, for which daily masses of thanksgiving should be sung). “As you so cleverly put it, two pairs of eyes –”

“And two pairs of ears.”

Porthos has been wondering, since long before he disturbed her in the stable in Le Havre, since long before he heard the care in her voice which meant she hadn’t come from anywhere reputable (Sarazin had been proof enough of that, but even Sarazin was outside the Court, plying his trade on the edge of acceptability). Porthos has been wondering since before that, since his new captain, his old friend rode off towards the sea when war had already shrunk the world down to a heartbeat. What Porthos has been wondering, whenever he has time to wonder, is why England? Why would Milady de Winter go to England to start a new life, to a country which reveres the French for their taste in wine and satin and yet hates them? Hates the French Queen of England? Why not go to Spain, to Italy? Women control the canals in Venice, or so he’s heard, far away where the law is topsy-turvy and the Pope holds less sway. Why go to England, and to the English Court, and into the arms of a snake?

Because it was her duty.

Because her king commanded it.

“You were never going to marry Buckingham,” he realises. It’s not a question. “You’re spying on him.” Also not a question. “You flushed out the Spanish spy.”

“De la Vega was…unexpected.” Not an answer. “But he’s dead now. Treville can rest a little easier, if he ever rests at all.” Also not an answer.

“And so you will all go to war soon, d’Artagnan and Aramis and yourself,” the King interposes, letting his rose drop to the ground. “And Athos too. The musketeers need their captain in the field.” He divides a weary smile between the two of them, and both marvels that he seems to be seeing the world as it is at last. “I could have lost the Queen,” he tells them. “And that is worth a dozen wars.”

And a king without a queen is alone on the chessboard. A queen without a king, on the other hand, is all powerful, but blank-faced. Porthos watches Milady walk ahead of him, as he promised Athos he would – which is her face? Is it the liar’s face, or the lady’s face, or the face of a spy, or the face of a wife?

Certain philosophers contend that there’s a form of intelligence which has to do with the heart, and Porthos du Vallon has it.

“I warned you that you would have more of me than anyone else.” She addresses this to the horizon, to the beautiful gardens, to the path leading to the stables where she intends to brush Melusine until the mare is rapturous and she is as peaceful as she ever can be. She doesn’t dare sleep. She doesn’t dare dream (because while her life _does_ frighten her, death frightens her more). She dies in her dreams every night these days. “I didn’t say you would like it.”

“You must be tired,” he suggests, ignoring her, and seeing the gaps in what she’s said, and seeing her true self peeping between. “Hungry. Hurting, maybe.”

She ignores him because he isn’t her gaoler, and because she has work to do.

**.**

This Moor doesn’t dress like a Christian, or serve a Christian king. He serves himself, drifting about the Louvre in robes of black and gold, scrupulously clean and soft-spoken and kind to a fault. He’s a curiosity to most, and a friend to the Queen’s private messenger.

“Marḥaban, Lady Constance.”

Hamza Alaman has the same nobly-shaped skull as his cousin, the late Spanish general, but his mother was a gentlewoman of Constantinople. From her he inherited his light, long-lashed eyes, but the elegance of his movements and the shrug of his shoulders is wholly Arab. They find him in the herb garden, squatting among the beds, and he rises to his feet at the sound of their steps with a grace both Constance and d’Artagnan envy. The Bible insists men are made of earth, but the Moor moves like water. He has the same calming cadences to his voice.

“Marḥaban,” she responds shyly, eager to get it right. “This is my husband. D’Artagnan, this is Hamza Alaman, the Queen’s herbalist.”

“Alaman?”

“That is not how they say it in Morocco, but it is how Tariq taught Philip of Spain to say his name, so it is the name I use in France.” Hamza bows slightly to d’Artagnan, studying him expertly as he straightens, smiling at his confusion. “I came seeking my cousin Samara, only to discover she was already waiting for me in Marrakech. I decided to stay in France awhile, to see more of the world and do honour to the memory of her father.” He has a meticulously clipped beard, and his mouth is full and marginally pinker than the skin of his cheeks. “Your wife was good enough to recommend me to Her Majesty the Queen, who finds a use for my medicines and, if I am prideful enough to say so, my company.” He bows again, both acknowledging and apologising for his own hubris.

“I’m sorry to trouble you –”

“It is no trouble, lady.”

“ _Constance_.”

“Lady Constance.”

D’Artagnan clears his throat. “Constance, you have Lemay’s receipts. I don’t see why you can’t –”

She shushes him, drawing back her sleeve. Three tiny bottles roll down over her wrist, each about half-filled with white powder. “My husband thinks too highly of me.”

“As a good husband should.”

D’Artagnan clears his throat again.

“We need your help, Hamza. We think one of these contains poison, but I have no idea how to work out which is which or identify any of them.”

Hamza’s eyebrows rise. “Someone is poisoning you?”

“Not her,” d’Artagnan puts in. “A friend.”

Silently, the Moor extends his hand. Silently, Constance drops the bottles into it.

“This is chalk,” he reveals upon examination of the first bottle. “Limestone. It can be a carrier for poisons – it may be a carrier for _your_ poison – but it is harmless on its own, even if it is ingested.” Delicately, he licks the tip of the spoon welded to the lid of the bottle. “Simple chalk.” He removes the cap from the second and sniffs, pulls back his head into his neck in disgust. “This _is_ poison, Lady Constance – deadly poison. The alchemist who prepared it has mixed it with foul things – sulphur among them – to warn the buyer of its potency. It would have to be mixed with the chalk to mask the taste, but it would kill swiftly and cleanly. _This_ –” He taps the bottle with a fingernail. “This is your poison.”

Constance looks crestfallen. “We were hoping – well, not hoping, but – the poison would be something that’s making our friend ill, that brings on fevers and fainting. Could that poison do that?”

“Not this poison,” he replies. “Not even if it were given to her at a one hundredth of its strength. It kills, or it does not kill. You describe a slow-acting poison, which will build up inside her over time. If the dose is correct, she will be tired, and fevered, as you say. If the dose is too strong, she will burn up and swoon. She will have to sleep, and when she sleeps, she will dream strange dreams.”

“I heard her scream.” Feeling cold despite the warm day, d’Artagnan turns towards Constance. “In an inn, on the road from Le Havre. I heard her screaming in her sleep. She has nightmares.”

Hamza carefully replaces the lid of the second bottle, then opens the third. He breathes in the air over its surface, then touches his tongue to the tip of his finger. He dips it into the bottle and into the powder. He waits. “It is numb,” he declares. “But soon it will be hot, I think.”

“But what does that mean?” Constance presses forward, pulling her husband with her.

The Moor sighs (as if this is his friend, his sadness). He returns the bottles to her waiting palm. “Mushroom poison.” His cultured tones are grim. “It makes dreams. It makes fainting, and fever, and vomiting if the body is too weak to stand it.”

“Emilie,” d’Artagnan breathes. “Constance –”

“I know. She’s being poisoned like Emilie was, like I was.” She’s cold like him, horrified like him. “It’s not just a drug. It doesn’t just make dreams.”

Hamza laces his fingers together. “If she is often hot and tired and she often has bad dreams, and you took this vial from someone close to her, then yes. I believe she is being poisoned.” He bows once more. “She will be well again, Lady Constance, but only if she has no more, and only if she is purged until the poison is gone from her body. If she has more of the poison, it will build inside. She will be worse. If she has too much, and she voids her food, then she will die.”


	13. The Turnkey

They tell her about Buckingham, show her the vial of white powder, and her countenance remains just the same. Constance shifts nervously, grateful of d’Artagnan’s reassuring touch at the small of her back. D’Artagnan watches Milady’s face go from blank to blanker – not like glass, but like diamond, harder than steel. The innumerable facets of her expression reflect and refract the news, each emotion changing the shape of every other. In the end, all he sees is nothing.

“Am I going to die?” She enquires crisply. “I may as well know, as the two of you do.”

“Not necessarily.” Porthos is standing behind her, his silence dangerous in itself. D’Artagnan steps towards her and, at the same time, blocks his friend’s path to the door. “The herbalist told us you can be purged. Buckingham has probably been dosing you with mushroom powder every day, but Alaman said it shouldn’t take more than three to get it out of your system. Three days,” he clarifies, without sympathy (his sympathy for her would be their undoing). “But it won’t be easy, and you can’t do it alone.”

She closes her eyes. She gives nothing away. “No. A cage isn’t humiliating enough, is it? I’ll need someone to hold me down. To pick me up. To _counsel_ me. He’ll never agree,” she predicts, opening her eyes again. “That’s your plan, isn’t it? You believe that you can prevail upon his better nature, but he has no better nature where I’m concerned. He’ll never agree,” she says again. In truth, she has no conception of his better nature anymore. She forgave him (she forgave him the day she rescued Aramis, the day she asked him to go to England; he stayed anyway, so she left anyway, so it doesn’t really count), she sacrificed another glove and another part of herself. He’s given her nothing in return, only her life, which is now worthless. Better to die quickly, in the arms of that whoreson de la Vega, than slowly, caught in the web of George Villiers.

She’s so tired of death sentences, of the slow walk to the final gasp.

She’s so tired of men, and of their worst natures.

“Find another way.”

“There is no other way!”

There are moon-shaped shadows beneath Constance’s eyes, a testament to her own good nature. “He’s not going to let you die,” she tells Milady, she who has faith and hope and love in all four of them, and something more with Athos: understanding. “None of us would.”

Of course they wouldn’t. They’re the heroes of this piece, and their chivalric instincts are not what trouble her. What makes her close her eyes for that moment, what makes the scarlet ribbon around her throat feel like it’s choking her, is that her life now depends on his pity. At least he killed her for love, fraternal love for Thomas, terrible love for her. At least she died, that very first time, for something worth dying for.

“Find another way,” she orders, and d’Artagnan drops back, and Constance moves into his side, and even Porthos stays where he is and doesn’t follow her out.

He doesn’t stay silent, though.

“I know you’re thinking about giving up,” he accuses the cherubs on the wall. “I know you’ve thought about it.”

“Haven’t you?”

“Yeah.” His gaze on the fat, pink flanks of the painted angels is hard, black, and d’Artagnan doubts he’s actually seeing them. “But she’s not the Devil, and I’m not an idiot, and I don’t believe letting her die out of stubbornness is what a musketeer is supposed to do. We protect women, even women who can protect themselves.” He nods at Constance. “If she really wanted to go, it might be different. That might be her choice.”

“But you’re saying she doesn’t.”

“I’m saying she doesn’t, so it isn’t.”

“Whose is it then?”

“Not yours,” Constance interjects, pressing her hip against her husband’s. She understands him, too.

**.**

Red wine, slopping over her hand.

_You’ll have to forgive me._

_I will, if only you’ll let me stop talking._

_You must never stop talking._

They were on the bed by then. It was past midnight. It was inevitable, and yet they were both fighting not to fade into one another. Neither one of them knew why – perhaps because it had happened too fast, hit them too hard. Perhaps because it was laughable to live in the real world and feel as if you didn’t. Perhaps because it was impossible that they wouldn’t, but they weren’t _yet_ , because it _was_ impossible – but there she sat, his coat around her shoulders. She recalls wetting her lips with her tongue because they were dry, not to seduce him. She recalls the wine becoming sticky, but she doesn’t recall the shape of the wine stain. She never even glanced down at it. She was busy being real, and hanging on the sound of his voice.

_You can’t possibly have any more questions._

_Not a question…well, yes. A question._

He turned over her hand, palm up like his. The crags and valleys of his features were that much softer when he was that much younger, when they both were.

_Am I drunk?_

_No._

_Dreaming, then._

_Would you believe a word I’ve said if I said you were dreaming?_

_It’s the only reasonable explanation._

His fingers belonged to a draughtsman, not an artist, an architect. One fingertip came up to trace the curve of her upper lip, the cloud-coloured gaze following it.

_Don’t ask._

_That was never my intention._

Disregarding her own prior intention to keep up appearances, Anne smacks her fist into the moulding on the red marble mantelpiece. She hits it again, her look serene but her hand pounding away until her knuckles are screaming. Pain streaks up her arm but stops before it reaches the chilly bareness of her décolleté, the flesh above her heart. Anger is a metallic, filthy flavour like blood, one she has to rid herself of by spitting viciously into the fireplace. It sizzles against the iron.

“I expected better of you.”

“You expect too much of me, then.”

“Then you haven’t forgiven me.” The early evening light perfectly highlights the parallel lines of the Duke’s brows and cheekbones, the perpendicular arch of his nose. His hair pools in silken darkness on his shoulders, finer than hers. “You may not be my creature, but nor are you my child. I am not beholden to you and your tantrums.”

“You betrayed me,” she observes.

“And I shall betray you again.” He puts his arm about her waist, breathes in the scent at the nape of her neck; it is, as it ever was, lust-less. He doesn’t smell her like horseflesh, as if he would know her again by her scent in his nostrils. He smells her like he might scent fear, and she’d rather have him stir against her rump and know where she stands. “And you’ll betray me many, many times over the course of our life together.” He blows gently to set her earring swinging, chuckles as if this is all careless delightful. “And I’ll get you Athos, if that’s what you require to make life as a duchess more bearable. You led me to believe it would please you to see him disgraced or dead, but you prove to be fickle, as all spies are. I shall buy him for you, Milady –” His teeth graze her spine. “If you can master yourself long enough to remember who bought the clothes on your back.”

“I warned you not to treat me like a woman, Your Grace.” On the ship, where she was first taken ill after a glass of his best wine – the man who bought the clothes on her back is the man who would murder her. “I can consent to your schemes if you share them beforehand, but I won’t be dangled before Athos because his having loved me amuses you.”

What she can’t understand, as he caresses the space below her ear, is why. What does the Duke have to gain from her death, when the Queen’s pendant is still safe in her jewel box? What does some other person have to lose?

“Why should it amuse me?”

Athos.

“Because you see us now, and it seems impossible.”

Athos has everything to lose.

“Loving you is anything but impossible. What it is is nothing short of natural.”

 _He interests me almost as much as you do_ , said Buckingham of the incorruptible, the honourable, the upstanding exemplar of a musketeer he’d known had been made captain before she did.

“Then I thank God you will never have to endure it.”

The mess of a man who first tried to murder her.

She will die, she realises, and he will take the blame. His comrades and then his entire regiment will topple like dominoes. Treville will be crippled. Louis will be undermined. The Duke, righteously outraged at this insult to both himself and his country, will sail back to England under a black flag of mourning and break the newly forged bond between its king and queen. France will drag its feet over the execution of such a soldier on such little evidence. England, subject to Charles and thus to George, will declare war. Its navy will batter the vulnerable coast while Spain encroaches in the east, gobbling up territory as the army scrambles west to protect Paris.

Her death will be the spark, but they’ll all burn.

“And what will you do to entertain yourself while my wife wrangles with the lawyers? It shouldn’t be long now, but Katherine Manners has always been an obstinate bitch.”

Unless she lives.

“Take revenge,” she swears. “This time, for the last time.”

Unless she purges herself of his poison.

“We must have a toast, then, to your revenge.”

But she won’t be pitied. She refuses to be prey for her husband’s pity, for his honour, and yet she must save herself (and yet, she must be mistress of her own destiny).

“Not tonight, my lord Buckingham.”

Instead of asking for his help, she will pay for the privilege.

**.**

The diamond tumbles from her palm like a falling star to hang in the air before him, swaying slightly on the end of its chain. He lifts his head too quickly, lets out a barely audible grunt of pain.

“I didn’t think,” she says. It’s audible to her.

“What’s this?”

“A bribe.” He looks worse with his bruises in full bloom, black and blue. She didn’t think he’d still be injured somehow. She doesn’t picture him that way in her mind, and the desire to tip up his chin and make him meet her eyes so she can be sure how deep the hurt goes sickens her. She is sick, and sick at herself, and not touching him is more and less sick-making than it was before. “A bargaining chip.”

“Adsumus.” Athos watches Anne’s face as he enunciates the code word, slowly, with the utmost care. He watches her in full knowledge of the fact that her face never changes, but she hits him in the gut nonetheless. _We are here_.

“They told you.”

“They told me you told them to find another way.”

“This is my other way.” She lowers the pendant onto his desk, placing the clasp precisely in the centre of the puddle of gold links. “This belongs to the Queen. It was taken by that fool Vadim, and given to his mistress. I took it from her, and I’m giving it to you. You can do what you like with it.” Few words, fewer glances at the swollen side of his jaw; she reports like a soldier, like a musketeer. “I’m paying you for your services, to be my…keeper.” Her smile looks stitched on, but she goes on, “But I didn’t think the Spaniard did so much damage. I didn’t think you were incapable.”

“Incapable, no. Unwilling…”

He wonders if perhaps he wants her to hit him. Perhaps he wants reassurance that she’s alive in the strength of her slap, in the flare of her temper. Perhaps he wants to be petted – albeit with the back of her hand – and take more from it than she means to give.

But she doesn’t slap him. She doesn’t even snap at him. She’s imagined this conversation, every thrust and parry. She planned it. She used the responses she decided he would make as armour, since there’s precious little she can do to arm herself against him anymore.

“I’ve paid you for my life before. This is just payment in advance.”

It’s late. The room is warm, the ties of his shirt are loose. The scene would be ripe for a seduction if any such thing could ever happen between them again. She’s asking him for a cell, for bars, to sweat and to shudder and to be held with her arms behind her back. It’ll be the furthest thing possible from a seduction. She’s offering more than a glove in exchange for his company. She’s buying him like a whore. She’s testing his honour, and his honesty, and so he resolves to be honest. He couldn’t yesterday, on his back in his bed, with her drawing steady breaths beside him. He must be brave. Athos is renowned for his bravery, so bravery must be a trait he possesses. He must know how to be brave.

“A world without shadows is a world where you and I are irrelevant.” Where he’d be pragmatic, and she’d be dead in a doorway. “We’d be without purpose, we’d…there would be no reason for either of us to have come to be.”

“You regret the day I came to be,” Anne reminds him (not accusingly, but accurately).

“But I won’t be the cause of your death.”

She looks into his eyes, frankly, as a man would, as a friend would. She isn’t a man, and she isn’t a friend, but she looks frankly at him, and there are no shadows in that look. It’s a dart with barbs at both ends, which pierces them both. If she’d really believed forgiveness would be divide them, then the silent flight of the arrow which tears another hole in both of them proves her wrong. That will take more than seven years. That will take more than the English Channel. “Adsumus.” She echoes his pronunciation perfectly. “De Wardes gave you the rest of my message?”

“Yes.” _I absolve him, at last._

She doesn’t question whether he believed it. Maybe she doesn’t care.

He pushes past it. “You realise Buckingham has to die for this?”

“Not at your hand,” she predicts. “Not in cold blood, not without provocation. You’ve already killed a man for me this week.”

“What would you have me do?”

“Not be the cause of my death.” Not this time. “And for all wasting whatever time you have left before they send you to Spain and near certain death on my exorcism is the last thing you would ever choose to do, choose it. Waste it.” Her humour falls flat, but he does appreciate it. They may well drown beneath the weight of one another without it. “Adsumus. I said it, and I meant it. We pay our debts to each other, this last time, and then we destroy the Duke of Buckingham.” She turns towards the window, which is open in the hope of a breeze but which only results in a reek. “And then I return to England, and you to Spain. Nothing changes for either of us.”

“You said…” The room is _too_ warm, as it happens. He has to break off to wet his tongue. “On the ship from England…you said that you wanted to be happy, that you believed that being Duchess of Buckingham would make you happy. Does returning to England, would it…will it make you happy?” The fire which is making the room too warm is also making his eyeballs burn. He grinds the heels of his hands into sleep-deprived sockets and, coincidentally, misses seeing her expression when she replies.

 _His_ glove would make her happy. The greyish handkerchief that lives in his sleeve, spotted with her blood from their hunt for de la Vega, that would make her happy. Something of him, something tangible to bite down on in weaker moments. He’s the only love she’s ever had, he could hardly blame her for using him when needs must. Something with the salt of his sweat on it would do it. Something that smells of his skin.

(Something very similar to Athos himself, as if any such thing could ever happen between them again).

“It rains a great deal in England,” she answers him instead. Her belly flips like she’s falling. “But I can learn to like the food.”

**.**

With hunting considered too dangerous (with the occupants of the palace oblivious to de la Vega’s life and death), the King and Queen decamp to the gardens, and Her Majesty commands her ladies to dress in bright summer shades. Her cheeks are round with pleasure, like her rounded mouth, full and madder-coloured and pretty. The Dauphin is like a little pudding in her arms, a little royal dumpling, who flaps his arms and crows and reaches for Constance and his mother with equal frequency. Neither appears to mind. They share a knowing glance, and the Queen briefly slips her hand under Constance’s elbow and squeezes.

Those happy few sink elegantly onto the grass – both ladies and gentlemen affecting nonchalance about stains and insects and a general lack of cleanliness – as if all were right with the world. The royal couple take their seats. The hastily prepared dishes are served. This pique-nique is a whim of Her Majesty’s, and at such short notice there is no choice but to be informal.

Anne doesn’t sit back. Anne of Austria never sits back. She relaxes her grip on the arms of her chair, however, and sunlight surrounds her. She drinks in the mildly chilly air, but she doesn’t get cold. The daily grumbles of those not clever enough or useful enough to be generals or spymasters general go over her head, which is topped by the most modest circlet of filigree and pearls. As if she cares. As if she cares what any of them has to say. As if she cares to listen to their cares. Her attention is over by the perimeter, which is to say upon Aramis. He’s standing next to Treville, murmuring something (presumably something of vital importance to the survival of their country) in his ear. He’s an Apollo, not a Mars, and she’s behaving like a slut, albeit it a well-educated one.

(As if she cares).

“De la Vega is dead.”

Treville nods. He has never been an expressive man. “How?”

“His vendetta was against Buckingham, so he travelled to Paris to kill Milady de Winter. Athos encountered him in an alleyway two nights ago and discovered as much. His death will seem like a tavern brawl, no one can link Athos to it.”

“That’s not what concerns me.” What concerns Aramis is how much silver there is in the Minister for War’s hair and beard compared to a month ago. He’s beginning to look like a marble bust of himself. “Milady brings her own set of problems. Has she seen the King?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know why it was necessary for her to see the King?”

“Yes.”

“Then you also know that His Majesty didn’t send you to England to protect a man he hates, who is doing everything in his power to dethrone his sister.”

“It’s easier to play cards when the pictures are face up.”

The older man considers this, allowing the younger to temporarily follow his heart back to a beribboned shoe, and the hem of a shimmering gown, and the woman wearing the gown and shoe. His lips pull up inadvertently, he can’t help it. She gives no sign of noticing, but her fair lashes go up and down like butterflies, and she is beautiful. He thinks she was born to be outside, where the flowers themselves can be jealous of her.

“Where is Athos?” Treville has either failed to observe this non-exchange, which is improbable, or is ignoring it.

“With Milady.”

“Is she safe?”

“Buckingham’s been poisoning her.”

He swears. His sword is halfway out of its sheath before he remembers who and where he is. Aramis takes his own turn at being oblivious.

“It’s better if I don’t get too close to Her Majesty, for obvious reasons.”

“I agree.”

“But I need to speak to her herbalist. It sounds as though the poison is related to the drug which gave Emilie of Duras her visions, but it was her mother who was drugging her, and her mother was a French peasant. I doubt His Grace would have any idea where to pick mushrooms, not that he’d deign to get them himself.”

The Queen is eating an apple, absently nibbling on each piece as it is handed to her by a lady-in-waiting. Constance, at her side and therefore a good way away, is screwing up her face, trying with all her might to eavesdrop on their conversation.

“So you need this herbalist,” Treville supplies. “To help you catch another herbalist.”

“Yes.”

“And you want to go through me so as not to raise suspicion about you and the Queen.”

“You could have gout.”

The musket ball eyes roll towards him, metal set in stone.

“Just a thought,” says Aramis, whose devotion to God doesn’t prevent him from playing with fire.

**.**

Musketeers are rarely insubordinate. They are free thinkers, often, the more intellectually gifted of a company who can all kill – anyone, after all, can kill – but so are their superiors. Their respect for authority has roots in both logic and emotion, and the best kind of musketeer gives the same weight to both. Then there’s Athos, who analyses everything and lets life go on around him, and d’Artagnan, who takes too eager a part in everything and makes up his mind afterward whether the moves he made were the right ones. Athos wonders if perhaps now the Lord is testing him for constantly making this comparison, as his boots crunch on the crumbling edges of a rarely used staircase.

Milady moves out of the gloom behind him, stepping in his footsteps, bracing herself neither on the wall nor on him. The stairs lead to a room which was designed for isolation, to force its inhabitants into introspection. It is bare, and barely furnished. It is small.

It has a volume of Greek philosophy on the floor by the narrow cot.

“You’ve been down here.”

He doesn’t affirm, doesn’t deny.

“How many times?”

He doesn’t have to.

“Several. I moved my activities down here when it became clear I was bankrupting myself for the sake of a room and an amateur gaoler.”

She trips lightly off the bottom step and joins him in the cellar, and she does anything but cower and shrink.

“You may learn things you’d rather not have learnt.” Her voice is quiet, cool. “I imagine I’ll do a fair amount of ranting and raving from hereon, since God knows there’s nothing else to do in this pit. Some of the ranting will probably be true. Some of it will probably concern you.”

“But you’re going back to England,” he replies, as impassive as she. “So nothing changes for either of us, regardless of the content of your raving.”

“No,” she concurs. “Nothing ever does.”


	14. The Soldier

“How long?”

Every ray of light becomes a blood red-edged sunburst, exploding in the darkness between her throbbing temples until he covers the single window. She can’t bear sight. She can’t bear sound either, not with the stagnant air roaring as loudly in her ears as a hurricane. This is just the first stage, missing the poison. Withdrawal is draining her of the last dregs, and it doesn’t discriminate as to what else it drains too.

“How long?” Anne asks again.

“A day,” he responds wearily. “A day and a half, if that makes any difference to you.” It seems for a moment that he might reach out to her, be an anchor for her – but the strength of his hand isn’t strength enough (not for that). Her hair looks black, is braided tightly back to keep it from tangling. It pulls her translucent skin taut. It makes her a creature more of bone than of flesh. “What can I do?”

“You tell me.” Her tone is still provocative, as if there’s anything to be gained from getting his attention. “I’ve never had intimates. I’ve rarely ever had _people_. At present, I have only you, and you know better than I do how this goes.”

He knows better than anyone that he can do nothing for her. She can’t even raise herself enough to drink wine, and his kind of comfort would burn her, as everything else in the room will, before the end. “You hate Plato,” he recalls.

“I do.”

“Fortunate, then, that you have no say in the choice of reading material.” His intention was only ever to borrow the book from Treville, but addicts are renowned for beginning with the best of intentions. Athos opens the cover, inspects the title page.

“Are you going to ignore me and hope I go away?”

“No,” he replies evenly, balancing the tome on one bent knee. “I’m going to read to you.”

The look this garners him: the long, contemplative look from eyes narrowed in pain, not calculation.

“Read,” she orders. His voice won’t soothe her (it’ll soon occur to her that _nothing_ will soothe her, not before the end), but it hurts less than most things.

**.**

The Queen presses the tips of her fingers together, bowing her little head over them as if in prayer. The presence chamber is empty of so-called ‘important’ people, but everyone who matters is there – Constance, a line set between her brows; Treville, whose lids are lowered over his eyes but who still sees everything; Aramis, who would haunt these rooms like a ghost if he were free to do so; Hamza Alaman, the herbalist. His slippers make almost no sound when he gets up from the chair they’ve placed him in, and his gaze scorches the Minister for War like the sun itself.

“You dare accuse me?”

“No,” Treville replies, not conciliatory, merely honest.

“Unless there’s some great wrong she’s done you that we don’t know about,” Aramis puts in. He has become a model of curvature, from the curve of his smile to the curl of his hair, slightly disarrayed over his forehead. A woman might comb it back into place, were she to look up and notice it.

“As I do not know who ‘she’ is, that is not likely,” Alaman snaps, but his temper cannot run hot for long. His mouth relaxes, then forms a considering moue. His loose robe lacks embellishment and its colour is French blue, demonstrating his allegiance. “Poison is a coward’s weapon, or a woman’s – a man who employs poison when he could draw his blade is a coward,” he explains. “A woman who employs poison when she has no blade is _clever_.”

Anne clears her throat.

“Hamza?”

“Lady Constance.”

They bow away the honour of each other’s address, smile. Constance wraps her arms around her ribs, gripping herself just below the shoulders. She isn’t cold, but on edge. “There are dozens of herbalists in Paris alone,” she begins. “Let alone the midwives and woodsmen from Gascony, Brittany, Normandy…it would be stupid of us to assume you can tell us the name of the one who’s poisoning our friend just because you’re also a herbalist, isn’t that true?”

“Constance,” says Aramis gently. “We’re not going to torture him if he doesn’t know. We’re not the Inquisition.”

“You sound like the Inquisition,” remarks the Moor, earning him a somewhat less inscrutable look from Treville. “The Inquisition play similar games with words. However –” He spreads his hands, smoothing over the moment of difficulty. “Her Majesty’s favour has meant that while every noble gentleman and lady has their own physician, I am the only herbalist at court. The apothecaries value my custom more than they dislike the colour of my skin.” His grin is like a slash of moonlight, and he makes the same dismissing gesture again. “I asked them who had brought them mushrooms to dry and powder, for surely a person who wished to kill a friend of Lady Constance would be too grand to tend their own garden.”

Silence reigns. The Queen leans forwards on her throne, which creaks, and Aramis forgets himself enough to cast her an admonishing glance. Unnoticed or tactfully ignored by the company, she raises her bird’s-wings brows, and he bows in apology. She glows quietly back at him.

“And?”

“There is a red woman,” he reports, not being versed in the art of prolonging suspense. “Like the Devil. She will not give her name, but the apothecary says that she is noble, but that she only knows where to find the mushrooms, not how to prepare them. It seems to me that she must be your poisoner, for the apothecary says that she will talk to him if she can talk of another woman, a woman she hates very much. What she has said made him think she is seeking a sorcerer if the poison does not work, a bad witch. She hates this woman so much, he says.”

“But is not the poisoner a man?” Anne steps down from the dais, and Constance moves immediately to her side. “Who is this red woman?”

“A red woman,” the Minister summarises drily. “Who hates Milady past death and into damnation.”

“Catherine.” The name rings out, fills the whole room. Aramis’ expression is puzzled, however, and he screws up his face as if that might help him pluck out the memory. Athos would be better, but Athos is not here. Athos may not be here, but he is still the fulcrum around which this whole business turns. Aramis deems that insulting to Milady, but that is not the matter under discussion. “Catherine…Catherine de Garouville, a red-headed woman who hates Milady almost as much as His Grace the Duke of Buckingham hates France, who would be more than happy to assist in her murder. His hands remain clean.”

“And where is your friend now?” The herbalist enquires of Constance.

“Safe,” the musketeer answers him instead, firmly. “Unlike our poisoners.”

The Queen crosses herself grimly, and all but Alaman follow suit.

**.**

“Athos…”

The first and second times she says his name (a rare enough occurrence – they prefer to avoid using the names by which they called to one another as lovers, lest they betray something secret when they slip out again), he thinks she’s having a very different type of dream. He thinks her twists and grunts are tricks her sleeping body is employing, as devious as when she’s awake; he thinks she wants him near, but only to push him away again, to get another hit in. She keeps apart, aloof, even down here. She maintains a certain distance. Panic and pain she stifles halfway up her throat, before they can get to her mouth, before he can overhear them. It gives him a horrible sort of hope that his opinion of her has come to mean something to her, though she paid for his help in diamonds.

But she holds her hands stiffly in front of her, her feet together. She stinks of the cold sweat of fear. She stinks of urine, he realises, so rises from his slump to a crouch. He has to move her in order strip the soiled sheets of the cot, but then Anne goes rigid.

And she begins to jerk, to dance an unmistakeable jig.

He chokes, even as she does. He scrabbles backward toward the specious shelter of the wall, where the stones cutting into his back confirm that his night terror is as real as hers. She gurgles, her torso rising up and thumping back down on the thin mattress, her legs bound by invisible cords, pantomiming the hanging he could not (and cannot) bear to see. His torment is nothing to hers, but it engulfs him. He brings his clawed fists up to cover his eyes, but he can no more not watch than not gasp for air, gulp it down, breathe for them both. He hates executions. He hates that dance, which goes on and on, which is as dirty and vicious as a musket ball to the head is clean. He hates it, damns those who jeer and stare goggle-eyed at the spectacle it creates, and perhaps he does so because he condemned her to it.

“Athos,” she croaks. Her eyes have opened, too large and too white.

He just shakes his head.

“You didn’t come.” No longer provocative, she is pathetic. She has become a child, a whipped dog (his fault). “They locked me in the cellar, and I swore to them that they would regret it, that you would come to me. I knew that if you came, then I could make you understand…I could make you believe me. You _loved_ me,” she persists, with the same sense of wonder, the same confused elation as when he’d first confessed as much. “You of all people would understand being mad for me. You of all people would understand that _love_ …that _our_ love was the only thing that mattered!” She grows angry. Spittle flecks her chin. Her eyes are dead, are the eyes of a corpse swinging from a gallows tree. “But you didn’t come.” A whisper, a gritted teeth admittance to anguish. “And I had to _live_ , and I had to lower myself with Remi, with what Thomas promised would be only the once, if I’d just say yes to him like I said yes to you, that it would be _just_ between us…you, of all people, _you_ –”

She lunges from the cot armed with nothing but her nails, but it’s not enough to get her even as far as the floor. He has to drag her fully from the bed to have her against him, not to cradle or to cosset, to pin her against his chest, to protect his eyes from her fingernails, to wet his skin with her sweat. Her feet skid on the floor, skid like the paws of a snared rabbit. Her heart slams against his ribcage as if seeking an entrance, but not for the same reason as before. She’s no half-starved city girl anymore, nor a country lady with flowers in her hair.

What she is is hard to hold, but he holds her.

“ _You_ ,” she hisses, and that one word goes on forever.

**.**

Hope, thinks Porthos: the poor are rich in it, but the rich don’t need it. It isn’t enough to fill growling bellies or pay the rent on a house whose aged beams will fall down and kill you faster than the hunger, but it’s a start. Everyone has to start somewhere, after all.

His uniform cape arranged proudly about his shoulders, he fords the flood of people clogging the streets around the market, almost certain that his mission is pointless. He’s doing it so he doesn’t feel pointless, stepping on rotten, slimy peelings and worse when he’s forced to edge around a slow-moving section of crowd. He can’t do anything in the cellar with the locked door, and nor would he wish to – wine, cheese and most other good things ripen better in the dark, and time makes them more precious, not less – but he can’t do anything in the palace which pens in its inhabitants as surely as a prison either. He feels too restless for it in this time of trouble, too big, too brutish. He craves salted meat and homespun, he craves simplicity. He wants to be nothing and no one but a musketeer again.

Pointless it may be, but she finds him nonetheless.

“It’s no fun if you let me take it.”

“Flea,” he says warmly.

She weighs his purse expertly in her hand. Her nose is freckled as if she’s been in the sun. Not being one to look a gift horse in the mouth, she tucks the money away and folds her arms. “You were looking for me.”

“I know I was.”

“Porthos.” Fondly, she taps two fingers on his unshaven cheek. It’s the unexpected flick of her nails which stings like a bee, and she smiles to see him wince. “I know you were looking for me, I just told you so. You know you were looking for me, since you were the one looking. Before I get tired of you and go away again, why exactly were you looking for me?” But she undermines her speech by popping up on her toes to kiss him with a force that makes his teeth ache, a short, swift, not unwelcome assault.

He shakes his head at her. “You never change.”

“You never mind,” she retorts. “Now tell me what you want before someone notices I’m gone.”

“We’re not far –”

“I’m far enough.” And that short, swift, suggestive kiss, and her easy-going love for him is as nothing to her love for her home.

“Missed you too.”

Flea taps her foot.

“Alright, but not here. _Here_.” Porthos draws her aside, under an arch out of the main thoroughfare. People still stream past, jostle them, but they see more than see them, and all have a purpose today and a place to be. The decorative overhang above drips rainwater from days past, and blood puddles in the walkway where butchers empty their pails.

“Well?”

“You know every cutthroat in the city.”

“I know the best ones,” she corrects him. “Go on.”

“Someone’s trying to kill Milady de Winter.” He doesn’t see the need to say who, not when ‘George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham’ means nothing here, having no impact on the price of cabbages. “Come across her before?”

Flea inspects his buttons, feigning disinterest. “Took up with a lord, last I heard,” she drawls. Then her chin jerks up, and her gaze is keen as a blade. “Her web fell apart when your captain sent her to England. Her spiders lost their livelihoods.”

“He didn’t –”

“He did,” she insists. “Or as good as did.” No stranger to the stubborn set of his jaw, she laughs at it. “Right now, you’re thinking you know better than I do. I can see it. You’re thinking how could Flea, who only ever leaves the Court for half a day at a time, have any idea about the doings of your high and mighty friend? You left too soon to watch it happen,” she says. “But we watched. We saw her go up out of the muck, and we may not have followed somewhere fine where she didn’t belong, but we did follow her career. We _do_. We hear before you do when she’s in danger, or when she’s lying low, when she goes to your garrison and doesn’t leave. The money will help.” Flea pats her waistband. “But you don’t need us to catch any killer for you, do you, Porthos?”

“No,” he allows.

“Lonely?”

Nothing?

“Longing to understand?”

Still nothing.

“Ah.” She thumps him affectionately on his pauldron, in the centre of his fleur-de-lis. “Longing to be understood. You went up out of the muck too, but it’s hard to get all of it off your boots.”

“Flea –”

She devastates him with another brief (another _too_ brief) kiss. He envies her, having a place in the world, and having such confidence in that place. “Anytime,” she promises. “I understand you, even if you don’t.”

He’s lost the knack of melting away, of becoming one amongst many. She disappears into the melee of sellers and buyers, but he doesn’t have to hide. Shaking his head again, Porthos peels away from the wall and steps down, back into the crowd. No sooner has he done so, however, than the point of a knife pricks at the back of his neck, and what good Flea did his mood is gone in an instant.

“I would prefer not to damage you, sir.” The man with the knife has a broad accent, vowels rounded. French is not his first language, he speaks it too formally for that. “I have no quarrel with you.”

“That’s a shame,” Porthos returns. “Because I’m in a quarrelling mood.”

He swings his cloak back over his shoulder, effectively slapping his assailant in the face with the blue leather. The man staggers, and Porthos draws his sword; the denizens of Paris pause, pull back and form a circle, more amused than alarmed by a brawl on market day.

This non-quarrelsome assassin is dressed from top to toe in brown. He isn’t even prepossessing enough to be considered plain, but his long, string thin brows more than make up for any deficit in beauty. They leap about on his forehead like puppet strings as he rights himself and draws his own sword. “I mean you no harm, sir!” But he does turn that sword on Porthos. “No harm to you, or to your lady!”

“I don’t have a lady – well.” There’s a girl in the crowd with rounded cheeks like early apricots, and she winks. “I won’t lie, I’d like that to change, but what does that have to do with you?” Porthos swings at him, coming down heavily from above. The shorter man blocks the blow, ducking under the cruciform crossed blades. He is or has been a soldier, but he lacks the finesse of a musketeer.

“I tracked you from Le Havre,” the past or present soldier goes on, parrying another blow with his dagger. “It was I who forestalled and slowed down that monster, de la Vega, I who persuaded the apothecaries to tell all to your blackamoor! They would not have confessed otherwise.”

“I don’t like that term.”

“No harm meant, sir, no offence implied!”

“But I _am_ offended!” Porthos blows out air through his nostrils, cuffs the man on the side of the head, deciding not to hurt the idiot if he doesn’t have to. The crowd applauds, shrieks, guffaws as he falls to one knee.

“The Duke of Buckingham!” His assailant bellows suddenly. Porthos stills.

“What did you just –”

“The Duke of Buckingham.” He sweeps his brown hat from his battered head, pitches to one side and has to steady himself before continuing. Even his irises are brown, though the fervent, swollen pupils swallow them up. “My name is John Felton, and I soldiered for the Duke of Buckingham, but there was no pay for me, sir, nor any answer to the men’s grievances against him.” Felton pauses, and the Parisians chatter on about what a poor swordsman he is, and pay no heed to the declaration which has Porthos gripped. “He will do no more harm, sir, not if I can help it, not to your lady, nor to anyone else. I came to Paris to undo his wickedness, and if you will only convey me to your lady, sir –”

“Yeah, I get the gist.” With a grunt which owes nothing to exertion, Porthos heaves John Felton up by the elbow. His slender brows tilt up at the inner corners, down at the outer. “You’re after Milady de Winter? And I’m not ‘sir’. I’m Porthos du Vallon, of His Majesty’s musketeers.”

“You serve the…Milady?”

“Give her a hand would be more like it.”

“You will take me to her, then?”

“I will,” Porthos assents (he’ll have to break himself of the habit of talking like this later). “Only she’s quite busy at the moment, betrothal problems and such. Luckily for you, I know one or two people who’d like nothing more than a conversation with your good self.” Porthos claps Felton on the shoulder with enough force to make his knees buckle slightly. “Assassinating His Grace will soon be the national pastime, the rate he’s going.”

**.**

“I had hopes.”

She’s managed half a cupful of wine, which has dyed her lips a shade of burgundy too dark for her pallid cheeks. She makes a small noise of satisfaction as she settles back on the pillow, tilting her head backward for a better angle from which to examine him.

“You had hopes,” he repeats. He’s taken beatings less painful than these last four days, but it’ll take longer than that to cure him of his acerbic turn of phrase. “Thank you for enlightening me. I had my doubts as to whether you’d ever hoped – it was that which was keeping me awake, actually, not your unceasing demands to be entertained – but now, I consider it gospel. _You had hopes_.”

She doesn’t laugh. He wanted her to laugh, to break the spell, to assure him that these endless four days have, finally, ended. He wants her to put aside pale blue gloves and dead blue flowers, to take the hand of tolerance in the absence of friendship (or at least, he thinks he does).

“I had hopes,” she agrees instead, not laughing. “When Buckingham told me you were coming to England. I denied them, but I did have them. Why is that?” Unconsciously, she moves closer to the edge of the mattress, closer to him – except she never does anything unconsciously. She never asks a question she’d rather not have answered.

But he doesn’t answer. She wanted him to answer, to be a good man and nothing more, to brush off what’s been putting down tentative roots. She wants him to make her secure in her own sufficiency again, in her own stubborn loneliness (or at least, she thinks she does).

Conversely, he moves closer to _her_. He does so definitely, as if it’s somehow natural for him to share her air and her space. He behaves as though she’s a work of art, publicly displayed, as if she isn’t grimy and stinking and weak and yet living, as if she ought to be used to being studied so. It’s not as if he’s any better – meaning cleaner, sweeter, stronger from their time together – but he’s easier to read than Plato. His grey eyes rove over her features, not so much like gunflints anymore. He’d feed on the soft, drowsy openness of her face like manna if he weren’t who he is, what he is. He’s honourable. He’s an honourable fool, but the stubby hairs still stand up on her neck to have him so close, both of them tanging of wine and bitten back apologies.

“Not here,” he pleads, but somehow coolly, from far away.

Her mouth is a little open, and the gap between her front teeth is visible (another asymmetry which should mar her more than it does). She isn’t a cat, or a snake, or even a rabbit in a snare. She can’t be reduced to a metaphor.

She was Anne de Breuil d’Athos once.

“Not ever,” she says. Desire has departed now, all she is is heartbreak. There’s no trace of Milady left, nothing for Anne to cover herself with. “I saw what you did to my portrait. I saw what you did to yourself.” She puts out her hand and touches him, presses her thumb just in the place where chin curves into lower lip. She feels like fire to him. “Athos. It was you who told me that you won’t ever forget who I am, what I did. Don’t make promises you never intend to keep.”

His voice is pitched low.

“That wasn’t a promise.”

Her pulse beats erratically with nothing to keep time by. Her heart will never be so near to his again.

“Wasn’t it?”


	15. The Lover

“…for he is a damned buggerer, and a breaker of oaths, and a –”

“My God, Felton,” Milady expostulates irritably. “Did you learn French by inserting your tongue in a poet’s arse?” No one reacts, but she flips her fingers at the five men anyway. It’s such an odd gesture, this almost apology, that Aramis swears he feels the wind changing. “It’s the mushrooms,” she goes on, a dark lock of hair falling over her forehead as she lowers her hand. “And it’s too bright in here.”

It isn’t only Aramis who’s noticed. The slender breeches Anne is wearing were commandeered from d’Artagnan, but the shirt and coat were not. The swamp her, and she frequently has to push up the overlong sleeves, but she does so without complaint. This is there for all to see, and they do all see it: she’s dropped a veil, perhaps one, perhaps all seven. Perhaps she’s a woman now, and not the legendary Salome or Delilah or Jezebel. Perhaps they’ll have to treat her like a woman, like any one of the dozen women they doff their hats to on a daily basis.

Porthos, his hand still heavy on the man in brown’s sloping shoulder (bearing him slowly but inexorably to the ground as his knees shake with the effort of remaining upright), eyes her with concern. “You sure you’re alright?”

“Are you ever alright?” Adds d’Artagnan, one eyebrow pulling up, the other pulling down. Comedy sits well on his pretty features, as does sincerity; he’s teasing her, and neither she nor any of the others could’ve anticipated such a change in the weather.

“She is,” says Athos, which is all he says. Aloof by nature – though she remembers him hearing his voice echoing from the other end of the house, as though she wasn’t already attuned to it – he’s been even quieter since they emerged that morning. Maybe the wind has changed, or maybe a storm is brewing. Maybe paying attention to the door instead of to her is not regret for the intimacy they shared, or denial of the things he saw, or disregard for the apology still waiting to be made.

Felton clears his throat. Porthos bangs him helpfully on the back, resulting in a coughing fit which racks him for several minutes and effectually breaks the tension in the room. When he rights himself, tears streaming, the Englishman appears taller than he was before. “I am aware you find me ridiculous, lady.” Although he bows in her direction while acknowledging it. “But my grievances against the whoreson Buckingham are as insurmountable as yours. By a jury of his peers, in a free land where all men are his peers, he has been convicted. I have come to carry out the sentence, but if you would settle your matters with the Duke before he dies, I will stay my hand. _If_ ,” he stresses. “You choose to settle your account with him. If not, it will be my honour to settle it for you.”

“Men are good for two things, neither of which is paying my debts. It’s a gallant offer, however, and no doubt kindly meant. Thank you, Felton.” The captain’s desk is covered with wine stains when it never was before. Catching sight of them, Milady wonders mildly whether whoever cleans in here – if anyone cleans in here – has tried lemon juice. “I plan to go on as before,” she states (she doesn’t have to, but they’ve certainly earnt the right to the information). “And I suggest you all do likewise, until the time comes for Buckingham to attempt to use the Queen’s diamond as proof of their affair. Without the diamond, he’ll be humiliated and forced to leave Paris, and then you can get on with dying for your country, and Felton can get on with dying for his ideals. Are we agreed?”

“He’ll find you out,” Aramis interjects. “The Duke is a careful man. He’ll never go ahead with his plan without being sure of the evidence first.”

She shrugs. “He trusts me, insofar as he trusts anyone. He has no idea that I know about the poison, or about Catherine. He enjoys baiting me, and his bedroom tastes leave a lot to be desired, but he has no reason to suspect my loyalty to him is anything but absolute. I have nothing otherwise. I’m a disgraced royal mistress with nowhere to go to but back to England, where I’d be even more under his power than I am here. It’s not as though he’ll come looking for it here,” she adds practically. “Even if he does realise.”

“He doesn’t trust you.”

Everyone turn to look at Athos, who’s turned back to address the room. His eyes are like steel, but not so bright – pewter. He’s lifted the lackadaisical eyelids which make it seem as though he never cares too much (not about anything, not about anyone), but he’s not speaking like someone who doesn’t care.

“He knows you,” he qualifies. “Insofar as any man can know you, and to know you is to know better than to trust you.”

“Athos!” D’Artagnan snaps, folding his own arms as if in solidarity with Anne. His sense of indignation at his friend’s dismissive tone surprises even him.

But she is expressionless, as white as marble.

“Is that so?” She’s also silky, cool, slippery-sounding like satin in a stream. She doesn’t display any symptoms of having taken offence, but her posture has changed (this, she did anticipate). “When you yourself are trusted, and celebrated, and of great interest to the Duke of Buckingham himself? Not just because he wants to fuck with you,” she adds crudely. “Which he does, if that matters to you, but because he too appreciates the dichotomy you present: the brilliant, incorruptible captain who’d lay down his life for his country, and the chastened young lover who to this day is afraid of my shadow. Do you have any more right to trust than I do?”

Regret, for the intimacy they shared.

Denial, of the things he saw.

Disregard, for the apology still waiting to be made.

All these she feared, and all these she sees written all over him in the bold black letters of her mind’s eye. Even now, he can’t face it. Even now, he can’t face _her_. Even now, he hides behind hostility, even as she found herself coming out from behind Milady, softened by the drape of his shirt around her shoulders.

But how can she reveal that piece of herself when it isn’t even in her possession? Once it was just the one piece, one chunk of the whole which didn’t affect her performance as Milady de Winter, as Madame de la Chapelle, as half a dozen others, playing herself, playing them, playing at emotions she didn’t feel. If she’s being honest, it began before the first glove, the second rejection, but she uses gloves as her benchmarks, and by this point she’s convinced Athos has at least three quarters of her soul, but it does nothing to soften _him_. The truth danced a jig for him on a stained mattress in the cellar downstairs, but that truth isn’t his truth, only hers.

“He’ll kill you,” he states.

“It’s my neck,” she returns.

“Then you’re a fool.”

“ _Athos_!”

But not a single musketeer follows as he quits the office and the people in it, pounding down the stairs to the yard. She follows. Milady maintains a safe distance because the bold black letters tell her to, down an empty corridor which will be emptier still when their work together is done, into a bedchamber which will shortly be empty of life itself. He’s wedged himself into the window embrasure when she enters, is staring out over his small kingdom. She wonders if it gives him joy, if anything does.

“It’s my neck,” she repeats. “You resigned any claim to it.”

Athos doesn’t respond. The lighter fuzz on the nape of his neck makes something shiver inside her, but she doesn’t respond to that either.

He can’t contain himself for long, however (and it’s been longer than long enough).

“I pardon you,” he says, quietly, formally. “The evil you have done me. I forgive you for the ruin of my prospects, the loss of my honour, the tainting of my love, and the prolonged absence of both my better judgement and eternal soul. That was what I intended to tell you. That was the speech I was intending to make.” He lets out a bark of laughter, mirthless, choked. “Those were the self-righteous words of the Comte de la Fère, the words I meant to be the last between us. That’s all we are, in the end: words, your word against Thomas’ corpse, and a woman’s word never seems to be worth very much.” He has the look of a soul in torment; she thinks that if she touches him, she’ll burn too (as if she isn’t already burning, condemned to burn if he is). “Is there a crime worse than mine?” He asks. “Rape, perhaps, which I so nobly overlooked in the face of murder. I’m sorrier for that than the rest put together. Belief would’ve been of more use to you than my pardon, and I denied you even that.”

Anne stands where she is, breathing. It’s all she can do to keep breathing. It’s all she can hear, the sound of her breaths punctuating his confession.

“I know that I’m a coward,” Athos goes on, as reasonable as a slightly unhinged man can be. “I know I am, in the ways that matter. I know courage when armed with a sword and a pistol is no courage at all. I learnt that. I took the time to learn that.” He lowers his head, pressing it into the damp-swollen wood of the window frame until something creaks, and it might be the timber, or it might be his skull. “But it is _something_.” His eyes are closed now. “And something when you have nothing is a very great thing, and anything in a world without you was something like the sun in a universe of black.” His forehead strikes the wood with a muted smack. “Something like the sun,” he repeats. “A painting. A sonnet. An imitation of living and of being warmed by life and of having the days shaped by something. _Anne_ ,” he says, ragged, and a very good thing her name has but the single syllable, else she wouldn’t recognise it. “I sentenced you to death. I wanted you to die.”

“I know.”

“I wanted to die too,” he admits, eyes still shut. “And when you go, I still do.”

Her eyes are bright and hot, fevered without the necessity for poison. “Don’t,” she warns him. She turns away, bending double over the core of her pain as if around the curve of a pregnant belly. “Don’t say it, and then eat it, and then act as if it never was. Don’t say it, and then stand there stoic when I ask for more, when I all but beg you to let me be as I once was. Stay a coward, Olivier. Stay a fool. Pay me. Have me pay.” Tears line up along her lashes, fall silently, soak into silk. “Are you not my heart? Am I not yours? Haven’t we always known we were lying, but decided it was better than feeling like – like _this_?”

And although it costs him to move, and inhale, and continue to be, he goes to her. He puts his face close to hers, hoping to buoy her up simply by being there, and being male, and therefore ridiculous. His forehead is still striped red from the window frame (he’s looked better, she’s seen him better, and it makes no difference). He doesn’t reach for her, for her shoulders or waist. What he does is fill up the space around her, so much so that if she stands up too quickly, their heads will clack together.

“Be as you are,” he bids her gently, wearily. “Tell me your name. Tell me who you are now.”

She unfolds, not weary but wary. “I am Anne de Breuil,” she tells him, and some dam inside smashes itself, and she comes up on the rising flood. "Anne de Breuil d’Athos.”

His mouth twitches. “I remember you.”

She kisses him hard on that mouth, hard enough to raise a bruise. It’ll last longer in his memory than it will in his flesh, but the taste is unforgettable. She tastes like the salt of his own skin, of his own sweat. She tastes like blood. She licks blood from the lip she nips with her teeth, tugging at it for the purposes of punishment and pleasure, drawing it into her mouth and leaving her mark and leaving him stinging. Athos finds he enjoys that. His tendency to torment himself is expunged when she does it, when she makes it tangible, a matter for the body rather than the mind. He roves over her face, scratching her with coarse hair and dry lips, and all the while his fingers are soft on the softened line of the scar which ought to have ended her, tracing, stroking, erasing the error as her tense shoulders sink gradually away from her neck. There, she offers and there, he goes, to the unperfumed ears and throat, sniffing like a dog for a sense of this Anne, this body, this heart.

“You smell of horse,” he murmurs.

“It’s your shirt,” she points out.

He pulls it over her head. She claws at his back, scoring light lines of possession on either side of his spine. He laughs, takes a handful of her hair, brings her mouth back to his while she goes on to streak his shoulders with yet more scratch marks. She tests the muscles, yielding to the practised flick of his tongue against her, pressing harder where there are knots, old whitish welts from uppercuts and stabs in the back. She pulls his sleeves off his arms, crushes herself against him, counts down his ribcage. She smooths the skin over the bones, tends the cuts she made there, standing shirtless in her breeches and boots, like him in his breeches and boots, like they’re equal and not opposite (like they’re the same), like every pulse of desire which rocks her has its twin in him, like he rises and falls and wants as she does, on the swell of each shortened breath.

She undoes his laces without looking down, slips her hand inside. She moves with a sluggish grace, as if through water, winding stubby curls of hair she recalls as reddish around her second and third knuckles, wondering that some things never change and – with regards to _some_ men – that some things are unexpectedly beautiful.

He watches her with an air of lazy ecstasy, eyes gone black with pupil, and then he turns her away from him, and turns them both to the bed. His weight on her is a comfort, and a statement of intent, and they have a warm moment together, as lovers, as animals, to nestle together, to match every stretch of hide of one to the other, to draw breath together and pant together and break themselves of their wildness.

“What did we decide was better than feeling like this?”

“Being unbound.”

“I see.”

But being undone is much better.

Her navel is nothing new, nor her prominent hipbones, nor the rise beneath. She has her own curls, dark and downy. She has her own beauty. Kissing the feet is a more usual act of worship, but Athos doesn’t care about usual. Lips part, and if there are tongues of fire, they have nothing to do with the Holy Ghost. He plants his elbows firmly on her thighs and does his duty with circling and sucking and splitting apart the segments of fruit which gave God good reason to exile Adam from the garden. One bite is all it takes for the Devil to enter his soul, and Anne is the recipient of his sin. Unholy fire is what she feels, consuming her from the inside, denying her shame in being naked, in being open, in being bound. She is bound to him, after all. She’s bound by the ring in the pocket of her discarded breeches, and by the itchy, agitated delight that breaks on her harder every time. He’s a witch. He knows how to bewitch her, from the pricking of his thumbs, from the curling of his fingers.

(And oh, she loves him like a whore).

Managing to squirm free, she chases herself down his throat with her own tongue, but her legs are trembling too much to take the upper hand. They’re adrift on a sea of rough linen sheets, half-hanging off the mattress, ankles and feet like fronds of weed, like fishtails.

“There you are,” she says, startled because it _is_ true, it is. “I found you again.”

He finds her again, and she gasps.

(And oh, he loved her then, and he loves her now).

They are as they once were, as they are – lovers. They move together, after the initial moment of shock because they’ve lived and relived this so many times, in the easy rhythm they’ve moved to so many times. It is easy. It’s as easy as falling asleep, as easy as falling in love. They move without thinking, touching fingertips and toes, kissing to breathe, breathing to whisper, whispering nonsense they should be too old and too jaded and too sure of each other for. They’ve been married forever, haven’t they? Hasn’t he always been her heart, and she his? _Amour_ and _c_ _oeur_ and _tout_ , everything. They should be past admitting the need to be adored, the need to be awoken, the need to rush and gush and pour into one another, locked inside a pact of intertwined limbs and vows before a presumably dead priest.

Her mouth forms a tender moue against his lower lip, too tired to force a kiss.

“I remember you now.”

He turns out her arm to examine its paler inner surface, the blue veins, the knobby, fragile elbow.

“That was my intention,” he replies, sounding like himself again.

And then she wraps her arms around his neck, and holds onto him for the hour of shaking that follows. He wanted her to die, he told her as much. He wanted her to die, and his grief might still drown him.

He wanted her to die, but she lives for him.

**.**

Aramis gives a glance like a burning coal sometimes, a smile that the Queen (and many of her other ladies, Constance one of the rare few who are immune) finds irresistible. That glance compelled her to steal the Dauphin from his nurse in a grand play-pretend kidnapping, and he shrieked and banged his pudgy palms together, and she glowed too. He’s napping on her shoulder, and she’s seated on the floor, and Aramis is lying pillowed in the royal lap with the royal fingers enshrined in his.

“I am pleased to have it back.”

“Aren’t all women pleased by diamonds?”

His scalp aches pleasantly as she tugs slightly too hard on a strand of his hair, combing it out over her thigh. “Do not,” Anne instructs him. “Behave like a man.”

“Would you rather I were a woman?”

“I would rather you were yourself.” She taps him sternly on the forehead, then runs her thumb down between his eyes, working on a crease there. “And you do not think that all women are the same, or that all women are pleased by diamonds.”

“‘Dissent maketh the tryst’,” he quips. “Don’t you add salt to your food?”

“And when you have lost your piquancy, I will add salt to you.” Her hair isn’t unbound, but close enough. A single braid across the front keeps the fairer, finer wisps off her face, the rest hanging down in a shining sheet. A reassuringly hank is caught in her son’s fist. “But until then…” She bends down, tickling Aramis with gold, his face, his neck. “Her Majesty the Queen commands you to be yourself,” Her Majesty the Queen orders, withdrawing with a giggle the likes of which no one has ever heard from her before. Her rich lilac skirts are all around them, he reclines in a pool of violet.

He also remains unkissed.

“This is the diamond which was to be my undoing.” She holds it up to the light, and the jewel spins at the end of its chain. “Why have you brought it back?”

“To turn the Duke’s gaze – and his wrath – away from us.” He leaves off a tactile exploration of a tiny infant foot to flick the pendant, to make it spin faster. “If Milady is found out, and Buckingham does go hunting for it, with you is the safest place for it to be. He can’t force entry into your rooms, and what’s more proper than something that belongs to you being in your jewel box? Milady can plead, if pleading becomes necessary, that it was stolen from her. His Grace can’t prove otherwise. His plan will fall apart.”

“And all your women are safe.”

“Not all,” he says grimly.

“Aramis.” Anne eases the sleeping Dauphin down onto the cushion beside her with the care of a doting mother (and more, a doting queen). “The darkness has passed. You have grieved for it. You have done penance for it.” She draws the outline of his lips with the lightest of touches, as if sealing them on the subject. “Do not cling to the shadows.” Her mouth is full, and seductive, and a little sad. “Not when the light never lasts long.”

“You mean Spain.”

“I mean the impossibility of things. There will be other women for you, Aramis, probably many others, and all I shall be one day is a reminder that you were young.” In that moment, she looks desperately young; she looks the years between them, yet she thinks this is his time to sow wild seed. It’ll never be her time, she’s very much aware of that.

“Never,” he swears, but the gilded head shakes, golden waves rippling on a golden sea. Her lips curve, and he dreams. Helen of Troy. The great Cleopatra. Aphrodite and Venus.

“Yes, you will,” she says. “There will be foreign places and foreign lovers, and I want that for you. What I want more, though…what I would _like_ …” Since she is politician, pagan goddess, Alpha and Omega. “Is for you to come home to me afterwards.”

His chest is aching now, lungs fighting the inevitable acceptance of her wisdom which ends on a sigh. “I will never love anyone as I love you.”

“I know.” The Queen inclines her head towards their sleeping child. “And you will come home for good when he is older, and smuggle his lovers into his chamber, and you will not be stern with him. That is for the King to do.” When she touches the curve of that round cheek, she will remember its shape. It will remind her of something she traced not so long before, of the handsome lines of his father forming beneath the skin. “We will raise him together, you and Louis and I.”

Aramis reaches for her face, for the stubborn chin which is indelicate, which makes her real. “I will always be young with you.” He draws her down, and she kisses him. She kisses him as if kisses can be bought cheaply, as if each isn’t worth a diamond of its own. The tip of her nose brushes the hollow below his left eye. “And I will always come home.” And he sighs, and so does she.


	16. The Decoy

Catherine de Garouville won’t stand for being fondled as Milady de Winter will – there’s nothing for her to gain from it, no place in their arrangement for it when Buckingham’s sexless, unaffectionate caresses smack of seduction to her. She scents danger and confuses it with sensuality. She believes herself responsible for the snap of a man’s eyes as she puts back the dark blue hood of her gown. She remains unaware, as he intends her to, that she means nothing to the Duke, and that other than his own shrewd, pretty, scheming wife, few women do. His Grace has respect for their bodies, for the curves he likes to traverse and conquer with his hands. He has a similar respect for sculpture, for architecture – while Milady’s mind and that of Her Grace the Duchess are of some use, he nonetheless prefers to pet them like cats than to ask their opinions.

“Sweet lady.”

“My lord.” She always uses the incorrect form of address, never having met a duke before. He doesn’t bother to correct her, not that she pauses for breath before demanding, “Where is she?”

Buckingham internally despairs of her lack of conversation, her sense of the game being played. What little breeding she had must’ve washed off, for she neither knows how to chat like a lady nor lie like a gamester. “Gone to commit a mortal sin,” he informs her, too lazy to match Catherine’s gaze with his. His eyes would rather delight themselves with the objets d’art in the room than the woman with pockets full of mushrooms. “And as I hear the proprietress of a house where she once lodged has had her throat cut, I imagine she will return today, and then we can continue. I have lessened the dose, however.”

“My lord?”

The Duke has dragons and sunbursts embroidered on his sleeves, each dragon devouring the tail of his brother before exploding in twenty-three separately stitched points of light. If there’s a whiff of sweat under his perfume, only he would notice it. “The Queen’s diamond.” He has a horror of perspiration, even when it comes to sport of one sort or another. “I require the Queen's missing diamond in order to humiliate the King, and Milady is hardly likely to have it on her person. If she dies before the diamond is in my possession, then my plans will die with her. Our… _partnership_ will have been for nought. You will have what you want, but I will not. I will _not_.” Running his long fingers along the edge of a long-legged ornamental table, George Villiers reflects that he rarely seems to get what he wants lately, regrets that France is not England and not his to command. No, France is a blight on the backside of Christendom, and Paris is its rotten core.

Catherine’s face has turned an agitated red. “You promised.” Her tone is petulant. “You said that she-devil would be dead before the month was out, yet she roams the city at her leisure, killing with impunity! Why, my lord? Have you come to care for her, as all weak men must do?” Thomas d'Athos, that charming narcissus, is at the forefront of her mind as she makes the accusation.

“You try my patience, Madame.”

“You try mine, my lord!”

Her distinctive hair has shivered down from its arrangement and she’s all but panting with temper, wearying herself and, more importantly, Buckingham. For the appearance of appeasement (he's a gamester even if she isn’t), he raises his hand to his lips and bites down daintily on one manicured nail, making a show of thinking about things. He thinks about killing her just then, about squeezing the life out of her, about lifting her from the floor by her throat. A moist pleasure begins to dew beneath his arms, and the Duke swiftly turns his attention back to the present. “How would it be, dear Catherine, if you focused your energy on what happens _after_ the whore is dead?” It wouldn’t do to sweat like a commoner, to reek as the French reek whether in the gutter or the most exclusive salons. “You have acquaintances in Paris, do you not?”

“One,” she answers him curtly.

“One you should make peace with, if you have any hope of any kind of life for yourself after our business is concluded.” Not that there is any hope for Catherine de Garouville: no hope of rising any higher than the top of her own head, no hope of an alliance with the ancient and noble _famille d’Athos_. He wonders how and when to let the good captain know which witch it was that picked the poisonous mushrooms which killed his much lamented, much lusted-after wife. Such a revelation would be sufficient to tip any man over the edge, and the tipping point of the man responsible for King Louis’ protection is worth its weight in gold, personal attractions aside. Buckingham's movements across the cool tabletop become slow, languorous. The gap between Athos and Milady has closed, he’s watched it close. The absence of looking and speaking, the constant avoidance of one another is done, dead, buried. He may never get to see them fuck, beautiful, angry, ridiculous as they both are, but sex is easier to come by than water clean enough to bathe in in this world of theirs. There will be other puppets.

“Even poisoners deserve a private life.”

Soothed by this suggestion, the colour fades from Catherine's face. Revenge should be more than a reward in itself, and in her unfairly wronged, unduly entitled opinion, she’d be loved if only she were understood. She almost doesn’t care by whom – except, of course, the Duke of Buckingham.

**.**

Porthos isn’t the only one who regards horses as a solution, content of the problem aside. For him, it’s their silence; for Athos, it’s something to keep his hands busy. Melusine doesn’t mind men, only nudging him occasionally with her nose when he spends too long on a particular spot, his mind elsewhere, her silvery flank already brushed bright of mercury. Athos doesn’t mind her either. He apologises over and over again for his inattention that morning, pressing his cheek against her strong shoulder until she sighs and returns to contemplatively munching hay.

“You’re down early.”

“I was up early.”

“Hmmm.” The air has a tinge of chill from the night before, but Porthos is comfortable enough in his unlaced shirt, boots drooping, hair rumpled. It’s always warm in the stables, the large bodies of the horses giving off more heat than wind-threatened hearth fires as they slurp and stamp and sidle their way into wakefulness. “Getting acquainted with the Countess, are you?”

Athos regards him from out of the corner of one eye. “Is there a reason you’re here, or is it merely for the purposes of insinuation?” He’s rather rumpled himself, as it happens. His bones ache rather pleasantly. His outlook on life is rather favourable this morning, war and betrayal and theft and adultery notwithstanding.

“Merely for the purposes of asking why you’d get up before the stable lads to do their job for them.” He grins and, as ever, there’s something of the pirate about it – something of the rogue, of the corsair, of the ladies’ delight. That smile insinuates even when the words out of his mouth don’t. “Bit knight errant, that. Has she demanded all the stones from all the beaches in Brittany off you yet?”

“Strange, isn’t it, that I don’t recall you renouncing _your_ title.” Athos has turned back to the horse, is lavishing undue attention on the fragments of burr and leaf tangled in her mane. “And of the two of us, captain incumbent and marquis-to-be, getting up before the stable lads to do their job for them is more suited to my station than yours.” He flicks away a horsefly, and the stupid thing hits a post, falls and lies where it lands on the stone floor, quivering. The palms of his hands are damp, the skin on his back stings. He’s aware that he smells of bed, and good horse sweat and strong horse dung and the scent of his own efforts aren’t enough to disguise that, not to the sharp nostrils of Melusine and Porthos. Is he even trying to disguise it? Should he be? Better, perhaps, to disguise how lost he is to it, older this time around, but no wiser. He still has to fight the urge to wrap himself in this feeling, in her hair.

Porthos’ hand comes down hard on his shoulder, as honest and heavy as a paw. “Doesn’t mean you don’t deserve a little happiness, captain incumbent.”

He hurts in odd places, at the back of his knees, between his fingers. He hurts in his heart, where something red hot is being held against something which has never stopped bleeding. Athos has never not been a mess of scars, but this new one is welcome, and he resents the knowing hand on his shoulder far less than he would’ve before.

“Thank you, my friend.” A brief clasp of that hand, acknowledging both the banter and the sincerity beneath it (they’re men, after all, so straightforward expression is out of the question). “Get back to bed before someone accuses us of having early morning assignations.”

“You did just order me to bed, _Captain_.”

“Porthos –”

His laughter would be loud enough to wake the whole garrison, were there a garrison to wake.

But Anne is awake, has been since she realised there was a sheet twined around her instead of a man. She pads silently in almost as soon as Porthos is gone, and the dawn light halos her in dark pink, makes a mockery of stained glass saints. “Early morning assignation?” She enquires silkily. She stands in the doorway, half in and half out and nowhere near Athos – there’s no need for physical closeness, not really. They both crave it, they’d agree on its importance were it up for discussion. They went for it the previous night like two drunks with a barrel of claret, but they can survive without sly, secret brushes of skin which pass for courtship in Louis’ court. She didn’t mind waking up alone. If he’d gone for good, he’d make sure she knew it.

“I thought a palate cleanser was in order.”

“Were you Patroclus or Achilles?” She asks, bridling at his raised eyebrows. Her green cat eyes narrow to slits. “My God, you’re the very model of a nobleman, aren’t you? There are such things as French translations.” But the shape of her mouth is soft, like a flower petal, though nipped and cracked in places. The taste of blood is on her tongue, but for once it wasn’t spilt against her will. Anne watches the brush pass over her horse’s back, his exactness, Melusine’s response. Her nails sink into the rough wood of doorpost, a splinter skewering the top of her thumb.

Perhaps there is a need for physical closeness, really.

Perhaps it’s a good thing she’s nowhere near him.

“You have to go.” Athos is still looking at and, apparently, speaking to the horse. He speaks lightly, as if the matter is of no concern to him.

“Yes.” He’s observant for a man carrying on a conversation with a horse. The laces and flounces of Constance’s borrowed gown are as they should be, and although it doesn’t fit her and it doesn’t suit her, she’s respectable enough to return to the Louvre. Only her unbound hair, which overflowed onto his pillow and onto his shoulder and down into the crook of his arm, would merit a second glance (were she any other lady; Anne has never not gotten a second glance, which is a blessing for a vain woman and a curse for a disinterested spy). “Murder doesn’t usually take very long, and I believe I can claim to be more efficient than most. As His Grace assumes that’s what I’m doing –”

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”

“Don’t I?” Her voice is inescapably sarcastic. “So you'd naturally assume that I wouldn’t leave unless I had to? That I wouldn’t leave _you_ ,” she amends. “You never could manage arrogance, Athos.”

“But are leaving me,” he affirms. “And you’re going refuse to take Porthos with you.”

“And aren't you leaving me?” She counters. “I’m far less likely to die in the palace than you are in Spain. I know where to find him if I need him.” _I know where to find you_ is what he hears. There’s a sudden lance of pain down her thumb from the splinter, and she pulls back from his expression with great difficulty. She comes forward, but only as far as the horse. “You’re good with her. Kind.”

“She’s already been broken. Being rough is hardly necessary.”

Without discussion, they begin to tack up. Melusine, sweet-tempered animal that she is, submits without complaining to this interruption of her grooming and breakfast. Anne accepts Athos' help up into the saddle for herself alone, having nothing with her, not even the diamond she brought with her to trade for her life.

She has to have known that he’d do it for nothing, that he’d save her even if she didn’t want to be saved.

He grips her boot with a sort of terror of what letting go means. She feels his hand through leather upper and woollen stocking, his eyes hot grey like a summer sea. She can smell herself on him.

Athos lays his scalding mouth in the centre of his wife’s palm, surprising her. It’s not polite, it’s not chivalric, it’s not intended for anyone’s pleasure but hers. It heats her slow-moving blood. She shudders, and leans down too far to be near to him, almost toppling off. She pushes her face into his dusty brown hair and kisses him fervently, glad for once that he doesn’t see, that he can’t see. “You love me,” she murmurs once again. “And you always will.” Gloveless (all her gloves have been taken from her, and all her veils, and all her masks), the kiss she receives in reply goes on, and on, and on.

“You love me.” Saying so is all that matters, ignoring even the possibility that she might fall. “And you always will.”

They’re both Patroclus, and Achilles, and Briseis.

They’re both no one but themselves to each other.

And when the clatter of Melusine’s hooves has faded into the distance, John Felton drops down from the rafters like an acrobat. He lands delicately, as if reluctant to disturb the air of stillness in the stable, the cathedral-like hush which follows truth and swallows doubt. He wears a different face this morning, a soldier’s face, awaiting orders, no longer the bumbling, under-prepared Englishman no musketeer would dream of suspecting of being more.

“Captain?”

“Don’t let her out of your sight.”

**.**

Knowing that its price is above rubies, above glory and above every other diamond in the world, Constance reverently replaces the lost pendant in the Queen’s jewel box and closes the lid. The latch catches with a _click_ , and she lingers with her hand resting on the carved top for a few moments. The day is won. They’ve won, she and d’Artagnan and the musketeers and Alaman. She enjoyed the intrigue, but she’ll be glad to see it end: it’s made her a little thinner, and a little more thoughtful.

She wonders where Milady is now.

“Madame d’Artagnan?” The woman looks immediately contrite as Constance starts, rapping the wooden box lid painfully with her knuckles. “Forgive me, I didn’t mean to steal in like a thief.” But contrition doesn’t fit the lovely face: the dreamily-lidded eyes are deceptive, half-closed shutters over a look of permanent amusement. Caught off her guard, it’s the work of an instant for Madame d’Artagnan to call to mind every of her own flaws, to compare herself to this woman, to dismiss them all. She is lovely _enough_ , she reminds herself firmly, and lowers her hands deliberately to her sides, raising her chin.

“May I help you?”

“Yes. I…we have an acquaintance in common.” She curtsies slightly lower than Constance’s situation demands, evidently not a noblewoman. Her skirts are full, simply cut from rustling satin which wouldn’t pique anyone’s interest in amongst the lace butterflies and diamond brooches of Her Majesty’s ladies-in-waiting. Her dress has a low neckline, but not so low as to be improper – not a married woman, but not a nun either. “I am Madame Clerbeaux, Alice. I’m Alice.”

“Constance.”

“And you are the Constance who was Constance Bonacieux, yes?”

 _That_ Constance is ready for her now, and pauses a beat before answering. “I am?” Casually, she takes a step to her right, hiding the cask. “What acquaintance do we have in common, Madame? I don’t believe I know anyone who would gain you entrance to the Queen’s rooms.” _Poison_. The word echoes in her mind, bouncing back and forth between her temples. Her palms begin to sweat. There are other ways to ingest poison, after all, than to eat or drink it, and strange pretty women who surprise you as you go about your daily clandestine business are strong candidates to be secret poisoners (as a breed, they seem to be rife in Paris these days, protected by the walls of the Louvre and the patronage of villains).

Alice blushes, and Constance feels abruptly better. “I’m not strictly…I am a guest of the Comtesse de Vergy, staying a while at her invitation.” Poisoners are far too subtle about being poisoners to blush, she reassures herself. “She is doing what she can for the wives and children of the heroes of France, those who are fighting on the Spanish front. I’ve been trying to involve myself in good works since the death of my husband, he…well, he left me a great deal of money, and I…” Breaking off, Alice actually gives herself a small shake. It sets the black curls dangling coyly in front of her ears bouncing, and makes Constance consider liking her. Frustration suits her about as well as contrition does, and it isn’t as hard to like someone somewhat less beautiful. “And none of that has anything to do with the reason why I’ve sought you out, Madame d’Artagnan – Constance.” Her rose petal flush deepens to fire red. “The shared acquaintance I mentioned is not the Comtesse.”

“I’d gathered that,” Constance responds drily.

“Who is she?” Alice Clerbeaux meets Constance’s gaze with urgency and frankness, for all she’s practically burgundy in the cheeks. “The lady under the protection of Porthos du Vallon? I’ve seen them together in the palace. Is she his lover?”

Whatever Constance was expecting, poisonous or treasonous or otherwise, this was not it. This question is so unexpected, so unexpectedly innocent that she has to resist the urge to rock back on her heels. “Porthos?” She repeats, as if Alice’s enquiry might be due to some oddly romantic hallucination. “This is about Porthos. You’ve seen Porthos with Milady de Winter, and you want to know if he and she are –”

“Yes.” Alice is getting impatient. There’s temper in her eyes now, a glint of grit. “Madame,” she says carefully, as if to prevent herself from saying something else. “If you would be so kind as to tell me whether or not my assumption is correct, I can leave you in peace. It’s just that Porthos is a soldier, as you know, and he…he’ll be going to war before long.” _A soldier._ Constance tries to forget that they’re at war at least a dozen times a day. _Going to war before long._ Not because of her love for d’Artagnan, not _only_ because of her love for d’Artagnan; she loves them all. Athos knows more and acts less than anyone she’s ever met, Aramis sees further and better whether shooting or soothing, Porthos is the surge of hope and noise that keeps their collective heart beating. They’re soldiers. They’ll be going to war before long.

And she’ll be the wife of a hero of France.

“They’re not lovers,” she admits, sharing second-hand in the relief which spreads across Alice’s face like a blissful stain. “You were…you _are_ the widow, aren’t you? From a few years past. You paid for –” Constance hastily swallows what she was going to say, not that there’s any shame in it. She would’ve paid for d’Artagnan, had Milady not beaten her to it, and the bitter end of that day haunts her to this one. “You came to watch him fight in the contest between the King and the Cardinal.”

“And you married the victor.”

And  _that_ was a better day.

“You don’t look like a fool, Madame,” Constance decides, examining Alice with the shrewd aspect of a woman twice her age. “But you said no to Porthos, so you must be at least a little foolish.”

“I am a fool,” Alice demurs. “And I was a coward, which is worse. I’m not going to be cowardly anymore.”

“Milady is…Milady will soon be married.” The false truth sticks in Constance’s throat, not quite a lie. “To the Duke of Buckingham. Porthos is under orders from the King to protect the Duke, and his retinue, and the future duchess…and they’re friends,” she adds, unwilling to hand Porthos over on a platter before she’s sure of Alice Clerbeaux’s worthiness. “Good friends. He has many good friends.” Her eyebrows make the threat for her.

Alice hears the warning beneath the words, but it makes her smile rather than bristle. She drops into another, deeper curtsey, signalling comprehension with her skirts. “Thank you for your honesty, Constance.” She’s prepared to fight if the circumstances call for it, but somehow senses she won’t have to cross swords with Madame d’Artagnan again (and may even find her fighting on the same side). “I promise to step more heavily when I next impose my company upon you.”

“He leaves for Spain soon.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Do whatever you’re planning to do quickly, Madame. Don’t be a lady about it.”

“I’m hardly a lady as it is,” Alice replies, with a flicker of her eyelid which might be a wink. “Ask your friend Porthos.” She curtsies once more, and then her shoes make a high, happy clamour of tapping as she goes away.

With a sigh and a shrug of the shoulders, Constance picks up the jewel box. It’s heavy in her arms as she leaves the anteroom, her mind already on lighter, brighter things.

But a side-effect of happiness is carelessness, and carelessness is far more deadly than mushrooms.

Had Constance known that a matter of life and death hung on how long it took her to lock away the diamond, she might not have taken the time to admire its shimmer. She might’ve hurried. She might’ve closed the door to the anteroom behind her, shutting out a palace full of spies –

A palace full of poisoners.

It becomes a matter of life and death when such a person stops short in the corridor beyond the panelled door, catching sight of the pendant Constance isn’t supposed to have, catching their breath.

But she didn’t know, and the door stayed ajar.

And Catherine de Garouville saw such a sight.

**.**

You could never tell, unless you’d been told. Unless you’d heard the whole story, start to finish, tight white dress to borrowed grey gown, you’d think the glow emanating from somewhere deeper than Anne’s bones came out of a jar, distilled from flowers, peddled for far more than its worth. The drooping hem hides her muddy boots, she seems to glide over chessboard floors and through doorways no one had ever noticed before, following routes no one else could follow if they went looking for them again. There’s an arcane composure to Milady de Winter, to Anne, and it has nothing to do with bottled flowers.

She closes the door to her room gently, walks quietly to its centre. She stands in an island on the rich Morisco-made rug, away from everything, out from under the shadow of the gallows tree where she made love with her husband one cloudless day. She’s aware that every move she makes is the action of a giddy girl, still doesn’t care to stop. She places the hard-edged ruby betrothal ring before the looking class, slipping the older gold circlet out of her sleeve to join it. She admires originals, reflections.

He loves her, and he always will.

So God is either dead, or has traded in his iron fist for the hand of benediction His son promised to sinners. Neither God the Father nor God the Son has showed her particular favour before, but Anne feels like a miracle this morning, like Lazarus. She’s risen from the dead, and she’s absolutely starving after the purge – of poison, of bitterness. She’s shit from the street, the daughter of a whore, and she eats like she is because it is who she is. “My God,” she says to the wild eyes in the mirror that have stopped hunting, that have found. “You never learn, do you?”

“No,” agrees George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, his marble forehead ageless, his expression void of mercy, or grief, or even surprise. “You never do.”


	17. The Nemesis

“I wondered once before whether I’d end my days behind the bars of a prison.” She slides her finger down one iron upright, testing its strength as well as her own. “But as I don’t plan going to die here, why waste my energy? It might entertain _you_ to see me strut and fret…” She pushes out her lips in a moue, considering. “But we’re past the point where I play the rotten apple and you pretend to want a bite, Your Grace.”

Perhaps she has courage because she hasn’t been down here long; perhaps it isn’t courage, but the same stubbornness which took her through Hell and out the other side the first time, the _once before_. Whatever is at work in the dungeons of the Louvre, Anne isn’t afraid. She’s cold, denied either shawl or blanket, and her wrists ache and chafe from the manacles which clamp them together, but no, she isn’t afraid. Perhaps this is what being in the right feels like. Perhaps, in spite of the creeping mould on the walls, and the fetid air, and the rats she wouldn’t share her dinner with even if she had any, honour is better protection after all than a pistol or a sword.

And then she has to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing aloud.

Buckingham stands as if to attention, his posture militaristic, but he isn’t as tall as he once appeared. He’s still handsome with his dark, Italianate good looks, with the bridge of his nose strong and straight. He still seems to have been carved from Italian marble, lily pale, smooth and cool. Her ruby betrothal ring, both token and reminder of the traitor’s bargain they struck, she for France, he for himself, is back in place on his smallest finger.

“I believe we understand one another,” he responds cordially. “Which is to say that I understand you.”

“What do you understand?”

“I made you a generous offer, spurious though it may have been. I offered you wealth, a title, a blind eye to your love affairs, the opportunity to take revenge on your charming husband from a position of security you could never otherwise hope to achieve.” The silken strands of his hair are crisply curled on either side of his neck, but the effect would only impress one unacquainted with hot irons. “Money, power, and your itches scratched, and still you betrayed me.” The Duke puts his elegant head on one side. “It’s certainty, isn’t it? Why dogs beg at the feet of the masters who kick them, why, after so long, you still cleave to a man who offers you nothing you couldn’t get from any other – except certainty. I’d wondered, from time to time, why common people bother with marriage. Whores are cheap and children are expensive, but there is certainty in the sanctity of marriage.” There’s nothing sacred about his pronunciation of the word. “You are _certain_ of him, as he is _certain_ of you, and the wrongs you have done each other are as nothing to the knowledge that there will never be another lover, not for him, not for you, never another who is anything more than an echo of the first.”

“He wasn’t,” she ripostes. “The first.”

“But he _was_ , Milady. He was the first in your heart who wasn’t you yourself, I would stake my life on it.” He prowls toward her, as quietly as if on paws. “What thief can afford the luxury of love? You can’t have relished the prospect of loving a gentleman. You _robbed_ gentlemen, you _loathed_ gentlemen.” She stays where she is, braced against the bars, watching him come. “I don’t imagine you relish it now. Who is it that you love, the captain of His Majesty’s musketeers, or your beloved hangman?”

Anne stares baldly into his black eyes. “His methods of murder are cleaner than yours.”

George Villiers claps his hands delightedly, and it’s that which frightens her. She draws back as he leans forward, life and laughter sitting as ill on his face as on the face of a corpse. What should be grey and grim is beaming, not safely in its grave. “So it’s the poison you object to, is it? _Carissima_.” She wants to turn away from the caressing sound of Latin, from the surety of his cock hardening as he scents her fear. “You should have told me. I had something else in mind, but it seemed far too dramatic…and so far easier to blame on the Captain, far more conclusive. He has some experience, after all, in hanging you.”

What can the Duke of Buckingham know about hanging?

Everything.

The swoop in the belly as the cart rolls away, the drop, the gagging pressure, the goggling eyes, the rush of saliva, the kicking, the thumping of bound hands against backside, the tearing of swollen palms by bloody fingernails.

Everything she whispered to him, every trick she used to persuade him that there was nothing she wouldn’t do, no humiliation too great, no punishment too cruel. The best lies are half-truths (the parties and pockets she found her way into over the years were proof of that), so she stuffed him with morsel after half-false morsel, counting the steps from the ducal bed to the door, calculating the length of the corridor in relation to his stride, ears pricked so she could slam shut a drawer at the last moment and arrange herself in the window, arrayed in the diamonds he’d bought her, heart hammering inside a gifted gown.

“I ordered the coachman to leave early.” Honour can’t keep the chill away, but Anne bares her teeth at her former benefactor. Sleek, pampered panther though he is, she’s still a tiger. He’d still best not venture too near the bars. “I meant for Athos to be too late, you fool, else go to the effort of leaving something behind? I meant to go to England, to do my duty.” To be proud to say so, after that fact. “I went straight to Le Havre and I didn’t look back. _You_ brought me back. _You_ brought this upon yourself.” Her pulse is flying, her tongue is fleet. Anne prefers to be circumspect, as a rule, but this is one too many cells, at the mercy of one too many gentlemen. “I said I was no man’s creature, but perhaps you didn’t hear me: _I am no man’s creature_.” Not Sarazin’s, not Richelieu’s, not Rochefort’s. Not Athos’, half himself but not his bitch. Not Buckingham’s. “Arrest me,” she bids him. “Imprison me. Poison me and dance on my grave if it it gives you joy, but that will never change.”

The dust motes swirl, settle.

Buckingham looks upon her with an expression of exquisite disappointment. “You could have been magnificent,” he remarks. “A marvel.”

“If you hadn’t insisted on trying to kill me.”

“Trying,” he repeats, twisting the ruby on his little finger. One side of his long-lipped mouth is regretful, the other sour. “Indeed, Milady. I shall not make the mistake of _trying_ to kill you again.”

**.**

“You, Captain, are speaking of one spy, I am speaking of the fate of France! And,” Louis adds, scoring a line on the map spread before him with his fingernail. “I am growing tired of this conversation.”

D’Artagnan moves to Athos’ side, merely suggesting the strength of his arm. Porthos, on his other side, is there for restraint, a fact all four musketeers are aware of. Behind them, Aramis looks past the King to the Queen, to the diamond hanging proudly and deliberately around her neck. Treville is present, morose and faded by fatigue.

The great library they occupy will never be dusty, or draughty, or anything close to feeling abandoned, but the purpose for which it was created has been set aside. The great glossy sweep hosts an army of small tables covered in maps, tiny wax figurines of troops and artillery, different coloured markers and liberal splashes of red ink, scribbled and splotched across the whole to denote the war’s changing frontier. The advance into Spain is losing them ground in France itself; a lump forms in d’Artagnan’s throat to see it laid out like that, a lump he isn’t able to swallow. That’s where they should be, not here, not lined up before the King, fighting men instead of accusations of seduction, theft, espionage, seduction, coercion, sedition…

“There has been no theft, at least.” Anne lays two fingers on the pendant, a faceted rainbow against her sombre navy gown. “As for undue persuasion, sire, wounded pride may tempt even a duke to make claims today he regrets tomorrow.”

The Minister for War steps forward, surprising even his stone-faced successor. Athos identifies with the wax figures on the table, only safe while he stays cool (emotion is heat and heat will be his ruin). His eyes are gritty, his mouth tastes sour, and neither will go away whether or not he sleeps or spits.

As if he could sleep.

Rather than sleeping, he knocked Felton into the wall, held him down on his desk by the throat until the Englishman was blue and incomprehensible.

She wouldn’t have approved.

She wouldn’t have put herself between them, but she would’ve said something cutting, had she been there, and he would’ve realised what an idiot he was being, losing his head over her, once again, yet again. She wasn’t there and she isn’t here, but she is. She is the topic under discussion, referred to for argument’s sake as Milady de Winter, although he doubts she’d answer to that anymore. John Felton, he let go, John Felton who did his best, but now Athos can’t breathe. The weight of dread on his chest makes every word which leave his mouth sound awkward and insufficient. Anne’s release shouldn’t be imperative, in the grand scheme of things, but it is. It’s France and Spain and England too.

“I would have to agree with you, Your Majesty,” Treville begins. No amount of velvet or brocade can make him appear less like fraying rope. “If Milady were just one spy, _any_ spy. The truth of the matter is, she isn’t: she worked for months to protect Your Majesty’s sister, the Queen of England, and to undermine Buckingham’s power in Whitehall. She’s played her part perfectly ever since you first proposed it to her, risking her life spying on the Comte de Rochefort.” D’Artagnan and Porthos exchange glances – how deep does this conspiracy go? Athos, between them, is as unmoving as a fragment of Greek statuary, silent and still and waiting. “She has distinguished herself in your service, and –”

“And she is my wife.”

But Louis is too regal to flinch. His response, punctuated by the briefest of pauses, is flat, laced with a whine which has his wife turning away. “I am the king, Captain, and my lord Buckingham is a duke. I cannot free Milady, nor condone any course of action which would involve you marauding into His Grace’s business and releasing her yourself. I must take his allegations seriously.”

“Your Majesty –”

“The _king_ , Captain.” His gaze meets Athos’ with a peculiar intensity. “I cannot allow you to undermine my authority by going behind my back and releasing her yourself.”

“But the Duke –”

He bats Aramis’ objection aside with an upraised palm. “I cannot allow _all four of you_ to go behind my back _and release Milady yourself_.”

The Queen’s head turns like a flower on a stem, her blue eyes translucent with interest, with the light shining through them. Aramis resolves to hold on to that image of her, gold and blue like a blessed icon – how impossible this is. How human he feels, transfixed by her when everything around them is going to Hell even faster than he himself is. This was Milady’s doing, this love, her peace offering, and Aramis doesn’t forget.

“Athos.” Treville is as convincing an actor, with his tone of finality and regret, as a dog pretending to be a bird. “The King has given you his answer.”

Athos bows too low, too courtly, too obvious. “Then I must obey.”

Hurrying along the corridor outside, Constance has to side-step hastily in order not to pass directly in front of the library’s slightly open door. The Queen is with the King, the Dauphin is with his nurse, and the Duke of Buckingham is back in his rooms, writing furious letters and splintering a wide selection of quills (she peeped at him through the keyhole, his presence there being necessary to make her mission elsewhere a success). She’d be less conspicuous in a nicer dress, walking like a lady who can go where she pleases, but Constance so rarely get the opportunity to creep and be clandestine. She hasn’t fired a pistol in months, and if the men consider themselves starved of action, then she must be dead from the lack of it.

She straightens up when further away from the Louvre’s central rooms, the library and the presence chamber. There are more servants here, using the hallways to get from one room to another rather than the secret passages within the walls. There’s a more civilised way to the cells from the courtyard, but Buckingham wouldn’t have troubled himself to leave the palace. Her breathing a little shallow, Constance directs a smile at a passing maid. She stares back without recognition, the old bodice and blouse d’Artagnan would’ve questioned his wife keeping (if he ever went inside their linen chests) proving as effective a disguise as the heavy makeup and feathers she still has no idea how he wheedled her into wearing, once upon a time.

 _Ha_ , she thinks, but mentally kisses and blesses him much as she always does.

Past the kitchen door, into a narrow closet with unsteady-looking staircases leading up to the servants’ quarters and down to a cesspit and slop heap (if the reek is anything to go by). Constance takes the farthest staircase, grateful for her worn out shoes and their quiet, slippery soles instead of the elegant ring of her newer, higher heels. The closet is barely wide enough to admit one, barely lit by one window at its end whose light recedes as she goes down the stairs. The temperature drops, and the walls above Constance seem to grow higher as she descends, until daylight is an eternity away. She shudders, rubbing her arms. When she’s happy, as she is when learning from Alaman what to dose her musketeer patients with, how to lance a boil, how to taste urine for sugar sickness, she forgets the Comte de Rochefort. When she’s stealing moments with d’Artagnan, when he treads deliberately on the hem of her skirt so she has to linger longer, prevented from following the Queen for the five, ten or occasional twenty minutes Her Majesty never minds, her head feels very steady where it is, on her shoulders.

Rochefort locked her up down here.

Rochefort gave her reason to pray down here.

She prayed alone, in the dark, in shock and despair, all through the night. She prayed for Doctor Lemay, muttering his name and begging forgiveness for his soul one of every five times she begged for her own.

But, she reminds herself, no one every prays alone.

Faithless as she is, Anne closes her eyes as Constance emerges from the gloom (but to thank the Almighty). “It would be you, wouldn’t it.”

“Is that any way to greet your rescuer?”

“Rescuer?” Anne cracks an eyelid. It’s been hours since Buckingham’s departure, and in that time she’s had neither food nor water nor any source of entertainment. Her skull is screaming. “You can’t rescue me. Firstly, I doubt you’ve had the forethought to procure the keys, and secondly, you’re married to a man who will assuredly be precious about it if he’s not the one doing the rescuing.”

“If you want my help, you’ll stop talking about d’Artagnan as if you know him.” Constance comes quickly over to the bars, placing her worn soles with care. She removes a slim sausage of fabric from inside her sleeve, a wrapped file and a pair of filigreed tweezers – meant for the eyebrows, but the best she could do at short notice. “You _knew_ him, and I already know how _well_ you knew him, so don’t waste your breath. That’s the past. He’s grown up,” she says fiercely, turning back her cuffs. “And since that’s my dress you’re wearing, and since you seemed happy enough to let me clean you up after de la Vega, and since without me you’d be dead from poison by now, you’re going to accept this rescue for what it is, which is not an opportunity to make sarcastic comments to cover up how scared you’ve been. I know.” And it shows, for all her cheeks are pink and she’s clearly not built for heartbreak (it still shows).

The two women regard each other, but it’s an appraisal, not an attack.

A third woman clatters down the final turn of the staircase, breaking the spell. A single strand of pearls circles her wrist, a double strand around her throat. Her habitual air of amusement is indisputably absent.

“Alice?”

Anne closes her eyes again. “I’m dreaming.” Apropos of nothing, she thinks of Lord de Winter, who gave her nothing more than his name, the second man in succession to leave her with nothing. She thinks of Athos, whose mulishness she can hear in her own voice, damn him. He’s practically contagious.

“What are you doing here?” Constance demands, hastily hiding the roll of tools behind her back.

“I came to warn you, I –” The pearls strain as she pants, sweat beading on her high, fair forehead.

“About?”

“About me.”

About her with her voice like a taut string, like brittle glass.

Catherine is standing on the lowest step with a pistol in her hand, her deep blue gown blackened by shadows. Her lips are quivering. She levels the gun at Constance’s head. “This is all so unnecessary. If you and the heretic had let the whore alone, she would be dead and neither of you would be here.”

“But you and I have been here before,” Anne remarks, drawing her quasi-sister-in-law’s gaze but not her aim. “Haven’t we, Catherine?” Constance should take whoever the other is away. More, she should take whoever the other is and _herself_ away. Anne doesn’t need any more casualties on her conscience, and Catherine’s arm isn’t moving. “Though you didn’t visit me last time, I imagine you thought it below your dignity to gloat…have you come to cry murder again?” She goes on, purposely goading. “As I recall, that didn’t get you anywhere with either brother.”

Catherine’s lips are compressed so tightly, it’s possible to see the outline of her teeth. “I have no interest in a man too weak to kill you.”

“What about a man weak enough to be killed by me?”

“You destroyed my life.”

“I destroyed _Thomas_.” Even now, his name is worse than poison. She’ll never be able to like anyone named Thomas, would rather face hellfire than venerate Saint Thomas. Frost settles on Anne, seeps into her bones. She knows the feeling. She recognises it as her face freezes, as icy numbness covers her, stealing both sensation and fear.

Then Constance moves, so swiftly that Anne doesn’t have time to react – but Catherine does. She slams the pistol into the side of Constance’s head as she flies at her, while the other, Alice, claps both hands over her mouth, sensibly holding in her shriek. Her eyelids are peeled back, exposing the shining whites around the blue irises, the pinprick pupils; she backs into the far wall. She’s no threat to proceedings, and nor is Constance, who lies tumbled and awkward but breathing on the hard, filthy floor.

“With Thomas,” Catherine concurs, her colour high, the gun shaking. She isn’t accustomed to violence, in spite of what she’s led herself to believe She’s not immune. “With my husband-to-be, you wanton, murdering slut.” She takes a step closer, pulling back the hammer with her thumb. There’s a pink score mark on her skin, the evidence of practice.

“Your husband-to-be?” With his knee insistent between her thighs, bunching up the fabric of her skirt. “Or your seducer-as-was?” With his threats, with his implacable fingers.

Catherine emits a little hiss of pain, takes another step closer. Willing victimisation has stolen her prettiness, carved early lines into her brow. “You were meant to die for your crimes.” Her arm is trembling from the effort of maintaining both her aim and her nerve. “Have you nothing to say?” Her challenge is a whisper. She’s playing the part of an avenging angel, but true viciousness shines through the cracks in her façade. Catherine de Garouville may hold herself above Anne de Breuil, but she isn’t. She’d grub in the gutter too, but such a one as she would pretend she hadn’t, and never would, had never seen life as it was, from the bottom, staring up.

Anne only smiles. “Don’t shoot the bars,” she replies.

So Catherine rushes forward, almost joyous, her feet almost slipping on the flags.

So Anne thrusts her wrists through the bars and loops the heavy chain which binds her around Catherine’s neck. She grasps the links with her left hand, weaving her fingers in and out, pulling with her right hand, leaning back with her own body as ballast. Catherine struggles and manages to spin, reaching towards the room, straining the links. Anne is Milady now, flesh horribly distended by her death grip on the chain, squeezing, bleeding while Catherine’s neck forms pouchy pockets around the cell bars and between the chain rounds. She heaves, shearing the fine hairs off her hands, the burn fierce enough to make her bite her lip but not shut her mouth. Catherine claws at her, alternating her efforts between iron and skin.

“I considered cutting out your tongue.” And Anne, in saying it, realises this is the last of it – the last of her hatred, the last of Milady. “I considered cutting out your tongue, and trapping you inside your own mind, full of venom but with nowhere to spit it.” Catherine’s eyes bulge as she grapples with the chain, and she chokes out what must be pleas, surely, surely she must be begging by now, but Anne doesn’t let up. “You are _blind_ , Catherine. You would’ve been jealous of my violation at the hands of your blessed Thomas, you who’ve never been violated, never set foot in a whorehouse, never seen the animals who pay to fuck dead-eyed women when the price will never, _never_ be high enough.” Her mother’s face is before her, her yellow hair. A dozen replaceable faces join it, a dozen sweaty humiliations that would’ve been hers if she hadn’t run. “How could you love him? How could you defend him? You saw! You knew!”

“Please.” Spit flecks Catherine’s chin, her throat streams scarlet from the gouges in Anne’s hands. Her plea is for Alice, pressed against the wall as if the stones might swallow her. Her hopes are for Alice, for the lovely Alice Clerbeaux who doesn’t know the meaning of violation either.

Slowly, Alice levers herself off the wall, detaching silk from masonry.

“ _Please_.”

Gracefully, she sweeps her pistachio-coloured skirts out of the way.

“Madame –”

Firmly, she grasps Catherine’s waist, eyes unseeing, mouth unspeaking.

“ _Please!_ ”

She yanks, and Anne yanks, but it’s Alice  – coming through with cruelty when Constance never could, acting with cutthroat practicality when Constance never would – who has the honour of being the last thing Catherine de Garouville ever sees.

The redheaded woman gurgles, jolts. A great gasping well and sunken channels open up over her chest, showing her ribs and the spaces between as her whole body battles for breath (bucking, writhing, denying until the very last moment that this is it, the last of her bitterness, the last of her and Athos and her and Thomas, the last of her life). Then, with a sigh, far more softly than she entered, she leaves. Her chin drops onto her chest, and the iron chain linking Anne’s wrists hangs slack.

It’s no cleaner than a noose, and no kinder, but it’s done.

“Go,” she command.

“What?”

“Go and get the moor, bring him for Constance.”

“The moor, yes.” Alice’s hands are busy at her sides, smoothing her dress, plucking at her skirt, fixing what she’s just fixed and unfixing it again to fix it once more.

“Hamza Alaman, go and – Alice, your name is Alice. Alice?”

Alice starts. “Yes?”

“Get Alaman, the moor. Bring him for Constance.”

“For Constance, yes. At once.”

Alaman comes, his full mouth turning down at the sight of the body on the floor. D’Artagnan comes, taking the stairs two at a time. Aramis comes. Porthos comes. Athos comes, dropping to his knees to gently close Catherine’s eyes.

Constance comes round, rueful and bruised.

The cell is empty.


	18. The Executioner

They emerge from the stairway, into a servants’ hallway only marginally cleaner than the prison below. Alaman solemnly bears the body of Catherine de Garouville in his arms, swathed in his heavy outer robe. Its folds drip to the floor like ripples of garnet-coloured water as he bows to the ladies, nods to the men, breaks away from them and goes to a section of wall with a handle at the centre of its ornamental frieze. He opens it with a liquid motion, unencumbered by the dead woman’s weight, and disappears inside. He’ll see her safe through the warren of passages, wash and wind and ready her for burial with the care no other member of the party could’ve found it in themselves to offer.

Constance has an ugly, sticky wound on her temple. “We’ll go to my room,” she decides. “No one would question seeing you there.”

D’Artagnan has hold of her arm, her elbow, her shoulder; he hangs on with both hands as if she might fly away. She allows it. She turns her face towards him for a moment, and delicately, frowning with effort and fear and anger, he peels away a tangled, bloody strand from her forehead. His brow smooths out.

But on Constance’s other side is Athos, gunflint eyes unreadable, and his peace of mind is, in this instance, far more important to her than her husband’s. She purses her lips in a silent promise to d’Artagnan, pre-emptively accepting scolding and nursing and kiss, when the time is right. Constance then takes a firm grip on Athos’ wrist, tethering him to her. She’s well acquainted with his preferred method of coping, and has no intention of letting him out of her sight long enough for a bottle of wine to making him incapable of standing upright as well as speaking.

Not that she wouldn’t object to some brandy herself, for wholly medicinal purposes.

Constance has never stayed in the chamber assigned to her since her marriage. It’s arranged to the Queen’s taste, her touch easily discernible amongst carpenters, painters and the dozens of servants who pass in and out daily to light the candles and douse them again, despite the lack of an occupant. Rather than the traditional portraits of Grecian women in gauzy chitons, the walls are decorated with martial scenes: ancient kings in ornate armour, companies of men and horses. The colours are bolder too, apple green instead of sage, without even a trace of gilding. The bedlinen is immaculately white. The corners on the pillowcases look sharp enough to prick.

Aramis closes the door behind them.

“First things first.” Ever the gallant, he keeps  is tactfully averted from Alice Clerbeaux, from Porthos’ unshakeable clasp of her hand.

A discreet nudge from Constance directs d’Artagnan to the window embrasure. Athos, inexpressive but ambulatory, is swept along in their wake. Aramis stays where he is, back to the door, chin on his chest. The brim of his hat shades his open countenance, veils his expression (romantic though he is, he’s also the perfect doorstop).

Porthos and Alice are left in the centre of the room. It doesn’t seem minutes that they’ve been apart – it seems what it is, months and years. Is it good or bad, he asks himself, that so little has changed since he saw her last? He’s still a soldier and, judging by the lack of ring on her finger, she’s still a rich man’s widow.

Her name is still Alice, and that’s what matters.

He found a sister in Samara, but not a lover. Nightly opportunities find him, and some of these he’s pursued. That feeling, though, the feeling Alice made him feel with the warmth of her cheek against his chest, with the shallow dimple beside her mouth, that feeling has ever since been absent. He has enough sisters, one in colour, one in history, one writing poetry in Morocco and one God only knows where, most likely in peril (and most certainly being critical about the nature of that peril if she is). Porthos, having had a mother for so short a time, having had his hopes of his father dashed, having had his world shrink to the musketeers yet again, rarely stops moving long enough to consider he might be lonely.

“You’re alright.” It isn’t a question. He’s already checking, sliding his thumbs up and under her jaw, tilting her chin from side-to-side.

“I’m alright,” Alice agrees. Her eyes are tired but so, so blue. “I killed that woman,” she tells him. “When I decided the violence of your life was too much for us to be together. That’s funny, isn’t it? It was horrible, of course, but…it should be funny, shouldn’t it?” A tear hovers on the edge of her eyelid, the first drop of rain foretelling a storm.

“No,” he replies stoutly. “It doesn’t have to be funny. It doesn’t have to be ironic, or contrary, or whatever else your head is telling you it should be. You did what you had to do.”

“I was a soldier.”

“Yeah.”

“Like you.”

“Yeah.”

The tear falls. It runs over his thumb, and he uses the side of his hand to wipe it away without loosening his hold. Alice’s lips curl very slightly. “I’ve been looking for you.” The lashes which rim her right eye, matted by that single tear, are long and dark as night. “I’ve been waiting for the right time.”

He grins ruefully down at her. “Probably not now, is it?”

She shrugs, revealing a glimmer of her usual quick humour. “I doubt it’s ever the right time with you musketeers.”

“You’d best get it over with, then.”

“Mmhmm.”

Porthos’ chest is tight. The blood appears to have retreated from every part of his body save his fingers, which curve around Alice’s neck and jaw, which keep her face uplifted to his. She isn’t without flaws, is far from perfect in comparison to Grecian women in gauzy chitons, but the neat brown moles which pock her creamy skin don’t mar it (he has particularly fond memories of the one in the hollow of her throat).

“Will you have me, Porthos du Vallon?” Alice asks formally. “As I am? As you are?”

“We’re headed for Spain soon.”

“Soon isn’t now.”

“True.” He strokes the seam of her closed mouth, and her breath flutters against him like butterfly wings. “I should warn you, though, I want the whole thing. Marriage –”

“I wasn’t planning to take you as a lover, to lock you in the pantry and to only release you when I felt the urge.”

Their laughter blends, bass and soprano.

“Well then, Madame.” That same warmth fills him, like her cheek on his chest. Her hand covers his on her face, slender and smaller but so, so steady. “I accept your proposal.”

She turns to water when he kisses her, knees buckling just enough for him to have to catch her up, his arm around her waist, one of her hands still entwined with his while the other grips his shoulder, finding purchase on the embossed fleur-de-lis. Alice sighs, Porthos nips her lip with the unexpected recherché which is his way, which is the only way as far as he’s concerned, and she sighs again. Their hearts meet somewhere in the middle, between padding and boning, between muscle and flesh. How strangely fragile she appears at first glance, being as she is sturdy, honest, her weight grounding him like an anchor. Both briefly wonder if it’s the earth shifting, or them. Both decide it doesn’t matter. Both momentarily recall that there are other people in the room, involuntary spectators. Both dismiss this as unimportant. Their promise to each other cools even when the kiss doesn’t, solidifying into rock, into a stone tablet, into a commandment beyond disputation.

“And now that’s settled,” Aramis puts in, biting the inside of his cheek to check his smile. “Shall we return to the matter of Milady?”

**.**

“This is all very dramatic.”

Buckingham has preferred to travel by horse since leaving his personal carriage on the quayside at Portsmouth, and this coach – quickly and carelessly acquired – bounces sickeningly over ruts and potholes, bouncing Anne – seated opposite the Duke, her hands bound by simple rope now instead of shackles – along with it. Their pace is too rapid for her to rest against the cushions, the most she can do is drive her feet into the floor to try and stretch out the knots in her aching back. After another unsuccessful attempt, she slumps back, rounding her shoulders. The flimsy white dress she didn’t choose leaves them bare, and her chilled.

“This would be far more satisfying for both of us if you’d just shoot me.”

But her travelling companion isn’t listening. His gaze is fixed on her throat, on the forked scar it’s been far easier to forget of late. “You’re very near perfect,” he remarks. “Or you would be, did you not choose to parade your perfidy before the whole world.”

“The whole world isn’t here,” she remarks. “Only you and I.”

“Purely for my pleasure, then.” Buckingham’s lip curls away from his upper teeth, unsullied by sour ale or cheap, gritty flour. “Indulge me. Entertain us both.” He leans forward, braces his palms on his velvet knees. “What lie did you tell Athos? What spell did you weave to capture your count, with such skill that he married you, and lived with you, and loved you – and loves you still, to wit.” George Villiers is his own foil, as eager to discover as he is to be disgusted by what he learns. His suit is royal blue, French blue.

What does she have she to lose, when everything is already lost, when even Milady has gone to meet her Maker?

“I told him as much of the truth as he could hear.” Anne’s voice doesn’t sound like hers anymore, doesn’t feel as though it comes from her mouth. “That I was an orphan, that my mother had died and left me with nothing, that I’d had hopes of a marriage with a man who had forsaken me.” Strange that she can never remember her first lover’s name. “I told him I was a seamstress. He didn’t believe me, he took my hand and said…but the gown I was wearing that night was cheap, so he believed I was a poor seamstress readily enough. That’s his greatest failing: that he has to see something in order to believe it, and if he refuses to see, you have to beat him around the head with it until he finally tires of pretending that the world is fair.

“He always knows,” she concludes, in a jolting carriage which has transubstantiated into a confessional. “He knew when we went to bed that night, he knew in the morning, he knew every night after. I didn’t have to tell him I wasn’t a virgin, though I had chapter and verse prepared in case he ever challenged me about it. He never did. He never has,” she adds drily. “I wouldn’t play the innocent for him, not that night, nor any night. He’s had all of me. I made sure he had all of me, so that if, by some miracle, he kept me, I could be myself. The past was nothing, I could lie about the past, but I would never have pretended I couldn’t make him happy. He’d have known if I had. He always knows.” She’ll never forgive him for knowing, and for not sneaking out at the crack of dawn, and for not paying for his pleasure.

She’ll never forgive him for knowing how to love her so she would love him too.

The Duke is silent, chewing her words like fat, deciding whether or not to spit them out. “You consider yourself a commodity. If he _kept_ you, you said.”

“He keeps me,” she replies. Her green eyes are tranquil, still water, clear glass (she has nothing to fear, not until the coach stops). “If I have a soul, he has it, or the better part of it…and that’s what you want, isn’t it?” Now she leans towards him, her cramped back muscles shrieking in protest. “Souls for your collection. That’s why you don’t care who you fuck. I doubt you even care about fucking, only that others ruin themselves on the altar of your cock while you stay above it all, His Grace, the Duke of Buckingham, pleading for bedtime stories because you have everything in the world, but nothing has ever broken you down and fucked you in the arsehole of your being and made you beg for it to stop and go on, and on, and on.”

But he sits back instead of flying at her, as handsome as can be in his velvet and lace, as forthcoming as only a spymaster can be (which is to say, not at all).

“I will not,” declares the Duke. “Shoot you. I would not,” he continues, each consonant elegantly clipped. “Give you the satisfaction. You deserve a dozen deaths, Milady, but even if I had a dozen opportunities to kill you, not one of them would be swift.”

But Anne is only Anne now, a dozen deaths aren’t necessary. One will do.

One will do, but a dozen lifetimes wouldn’t be sufficient for all the things she still has to say.

**.**

Today is not the first time he’s felt like this. There was another day, when the slithering creak of hessian tightening around the tree bough was almost worse than the sound of the drop; felt is perhaps the wrong word. It’s an absence of feeling, a curiously cold space surrounding the cannonball-sized knot in his stomach. He does not. He cannot. As he was on that other day, seven years ago, so he is today: wondering if this is all part of the dream he had where she came to him, where she wanted his help. If it is, and both the good and bad are nothing more than fantasy, then he never has to face a world without Anne (and worse, a world without even Milady for sticky, comforting half hours when his wrist aches less than his heart).

He does not.

He cannot.

“Where’s Felton?” Porthos demands. His eyebrows are set in a straight, grim line. “He’s been following the Duke since Portsmouth, he ought to know where he is.”

“Athos probably scared him off.”

Constance, still hand-clasped with husband and captain, rebukes the former with a sharp pinch. D’Artagnan remains too relieved by her existence to react. “Athos?” Chafing his cold fingers puts her in mind of a litter of puppies, black, brown and white darlings born by her father’s bitch. She can’t remember how old she was, only how enchanted. She can remember the third or fourth’s yapping slowly fading to snuffling, then to nothing. She can remember rubbing the little body between her palms, trying to warm it. She can remember the pitifully small hole she laid it in, in secret, in a corner of the churchyard, for all animals have no souls and no chance of salvation.

Athos’ hand reminds her of that.

“She’s gone,” he answers her, completely aware of how utterly useless such a response is. “Again.”

“Athos, you can’t freeze. I need your help, she – _Anne_ needs your help.”

Across the room, Aramis starts as if he’s been shot. There are too many Annes in Paris, but never so many that this one ought to be sacrificed.

“She’s gone.” Such is the depth of his despair, knowing as he knows, as Constance couldn’t know, that today he feels like he did on that other day, so this day is bound to end the same. The universe is savage, but not without design. They’re repulsed almost as soon as they’re drawn together, their polarities equivalent, their destruction inevitable.

_Everything goes in circles._

How could Constance know, despite the grass growing on Bonacieux’s grave, that Aramis’ guilt for Marguerite, for Adele, for Isabel was as nothing to his own? “She’s gone,” he says numbly, as if Anne’s death knell has already begun to toll. It’s not as if he doesn’t deserve the punishment.

_‘Mine be the glory and the consequences’, wasn’t that the family motto?_

_The first part, certainly._

Constance clenches her teeth on a whine of frustration, against a sense of uselessness she can’t fight by keeping busy or pulling up breeches under her skirt. “Athos. The Duke will _kill_ Milady. You will _never_ see her again.”

“Constance.” Aramis shakes his head as she turns hers toward him. “You won’t get anything out of him when he’s like this. Athos has decided Milady’s death is a fait accompli – to him, anything we do is destined to fail. He’s grieving before the fact because has no faith: no faith in himself, and no faith in us.”

“Bad luck,” retorts Porthos. “He isn’t the only one here whose opinion matters.”

Madame d’Artagnan, counting herself among their number, detaches herself from her charges and crosses the room to stand before him. “You’ve gone everywhere with her,” she reminds him,  almost accusing. “You befriended her, you protected her, you even spied on her for her – for Athos. What Felton is to Buckingham, you are to Milady. You can help.” Without hesitation, for the first time in her life, Constance places her hands on either side of Porthos’ broad, troubled face. Her grasp is as steady as her gaze. “This isn’t your everyday marketplace execution. He wouldn’t do it here, he wouldn’t risk any of you finding out in time…even if, at this moment, one of you is as much use to his wife as a pile of dung.”

“Constance!”

Constance ignores d’Artagnan’s interruption. “He’ll want an epic,” she persists. “Choosing her, that ring, the poison was all deliberate. He has to give her a death worth going to war over.” So Milady can’t be permitted to die for the pure poetry of it. “Where would he take her?”

“…Melusine.”

Which is neither a place nor a direction.

D’Artagnan stirs. “The horse?”

“Nah, the woman from the story, the woman with the tail.” Porthos moves restlessly, raising his chin as if chasing a thought hovering in the air above him. Constance lowers her arms. “She told it to taunt Athos, but Buckingham liked it, liked the idea of the countess being betrayed. He never shut up about betrayal, not all the time we were with him, not all the time she was with him alone.”

“It’s a leap,” Aramis points out fairly.

“It’s a good leap.”

“Then where has he taken her?” Alice asks, asserting her right to part of the conversation.

Porthos’ baleful glance gets no reaction from the quarter to which he directs it. “Pinon.”

“Where’ that?”

“Where she was once comtesse.”

 _Not here_ , he’d said, as if there could ever be a place for them again.

 _Not ever_ , she’d reproached him, so Athos refuses to hope, even now.

**.**

The silent man with the horse and cart is waiting beneath the tree, hat pulled low, scarf covering his jaw. It amazes her, frankly, that the tree is still here, that the branch hasn’t broken.

Buckingham kicks open the carriage door (which is possibly the most he’s ever exerted himself outside of the ducal bed). Withdrawing one of a pair of pistols Anne recognises as her own from under the seat cushion, he indicates the road – his theft rankles more than her impending death, which is ridiculous, but it is _her_ impending death, and as such it is her right to feel what she will about it. “If you please.”

He keeps the gun pressed between her shoulder blades for the short walk up the hill, through grass so long and so thick with dew that her petticoats tangle and slow them, but not enough. On the crest, far enough away from the hangman that Anne isn’t straining involuntarily and ineffectually upward to smooth her scar pretty again, to erase the past until she walks past a mirror again, she stops. The air is green and fresh, untainted by charcoal burners, by piss pots, by the Paris that was never her home like Pinon.

“No,” she says calmly, sans fear, sans smile, sans any hope of rescue.

“No?”

“No,” she says again. “You can shoot me here or in the marketplace in Le Havre, I honestly don’t care – but I won’t get up on that cart. I have no objection to your killing me, but I have no intention of letting you enjoy it.”

“I could persuade you otherwise,” the Duke counters.

“Try.”

For a heartbreaking instant, she thinks he’s truly thought better of it. It’s in the tender manner with which he takes hold of her bound hands, tracing the spools and whorls of her fingertips as if her hide is as precious to him as his own.

He breaks her little finger without even looking down.

Anne falls, but only to her knees. There’s some dignity still in being on her knees, not on her back. “ _No_.” Bitten tongue, bloody mouth, right hand alternating ice and fire in sickly swings of pain. Buckingham bends down, malice and sadness tugging up and dragging down the opposite corners of his mobile lips.

He bends the broken digit almost double, forcing a spike of white bone through tortured flesh.

“On the cart,” he orders.

There’s more dignity in being on her feet, and at least that’ll make it stop.

She vomits once, burning bile onto damp earth.

_Everything goes in circles._


	19. The Renascent

The death of de la Vega has not gone unnoticed. The Minister for War has been working hard to ensure it _cannot_ go unnoticed, and while Louis’ court is seduced outside by the unexpected sunshine, what light enters his inner office is sliced into precise shafts by the lead window cames. These hazy days of pleasure won’t last: the fruit in the orchards will ripen too quickly, summer will burn itself out before time, and it’ll be cold by August (and feel colder for having been inexcusably early).

This hazy age of pleasure can’t last, not when his soldiers on the frontier will freeze.

**.**

“I never thought to be praying for Milady de Winter.” Her Majesty addresses the rosary beads gliding between her fingers, worn smooth by years of devotions.

“I used to be so afraid of her.”

“With good reason. The English queen Elizabeth once said she had no desire to make windows into men’s souls; she has phrasing to recommend her, if nothing else, for that is exactly what Milady does. Men’s souls,” she muses. “And women’s too.”

Constance leans forward and, having no prie-dieu to prevent her, squeezes her sovereign’s elbow. “You’ll see Aramis again soon, Your Majesty.”

Anne regards the anguished figure of the miniature Christ under her thumb. “I don’t doubt it.” She’ll see him, here and there, now and again and sometimes all the time, for the rest of her life. The Queen is as content as her privileged position and the sombre situation allows, and it shows in her bright cheeks, in the higher, tighter décolleté not even her ladies have yet had the wit to notice or suspect. “God will punish the Duke of Buckingham for this, I am sure.”

“God and the musketeers.”

“God,” Her Majesty affirms. “And the musketeers, whose aims are inevitably in line with His. May He grant His mercy to Lord Buckingham, as I suppose the captain will have little to give.”

Rather than reply, Constance bites the inside of her cheek. She has her own rosary, neither as finely made nor as frequently handled, but as she works her way along the row of beads, the Blessed Virgin is sinfully (on the mortal woman’s part, not the Holy Mother’s) absent from her mind. The time for virtuous women has passed, if virtue is meekness and silence and submission. The fear that shocks her stomach like cold water to wake her from a faint belongs to another time, a time where even the whisper of a man would blacken a woman’s reputation forever. There have been more than whispers about Anne of Austria, but no sign of taint shows on her flower petal face. No accusation has ever been heavy enough on her conscience to bend that stern spine (even those which are true).

“Holy Mary, Mother of God,” Madame d’Artagnan prays, flushing with shame to be here, and not there, here where the best she can do is entreat God to do there what she can’t. “Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.”

This is the last time she’ll consent to stay behind, the very last time. Why should she not die on some distant battlefield, for some glorious cause? Why must she sit and wait and starve for news which may never come?

“Amen,” they say together.

**.**

Aramis has the brim of his hat pulled low, roguish even in adversity. The horses, however, are already tiring. “Not fast enough,” he reports.

“He’s got an hour on us,” Porthos protests, slowing to a trot to allow the cart rumbling along behind them to catch up.

“An hour is optimistic, my friend.”

“It didn’t take us long to get out of the city.” Aramis has an acquaintance of long standing with Porthos’ stubbornness, so doesn’t force the issue. He doesn’t need to. His good friend’s good heart may, if their mission proves unsuccessful, break. Perhaps if he’d had more than they three, if he’d been exposed to the commonplace losses of aged aunts to infirmity or insanity, corpulent neighbourhood officials to overindulgence, whipping boys to the morbid sore throat – but then again, he’s a musketeer, was an infantryman before. He’s seen as many men die as Aramis has, lost his best friend to the Cardinal’s treachery, lost Flea to the Court –

But his heart, his good heart, might break nevertheless.

If Milady dies, Aramis will bear it. He respects her, is amused by her, begs God to deliver her soul from the sword, her darling from the power of the dog – but he understands himself well enough to be certain he can bear her death. He’ll mourn, and then he’ll go on. Only rarely will she cross his mind, and his recollections of her will be fond but few.

But Porthos will not go on.

Athos will not go on.

“You could’ve stayed,” he says softly. “Alice wanted you to.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Porthos retorts, with the air of a husband of many years standing. “I’d never have heard the end of it.”

Aramis favours him with a crack of laughter. “Porthos du Vallon,” he pronounces. “Liver of life, murderer of melons, bound to one woman until death.”

“Bound like you are, you mean? Lock up your wives, it’s Aramis, but only if your wife  is a singular Spanish blonde.” They’ve never gotten around to talking about that again, not since the first time. Porthos keeps his eyes on the way ahead and his tongue glib, and Aramis keeps his eyes on the way ahead and his sally truthful.

“She doesn’t trust me, you know. She told me so. She doesn’t believe I’ll be true.”

“Because you won’t.”

“Before the war, I would’ve been inclined to agree with you.” One of Aramis’ ears is tuned to the conversation, the other to the slower, more even blowing of their mounts. “But now? If I catch myself whiling away the hours with thoughts of a woman, even such thoughts as wouldn’t have shamed Mother Superior, God rest her martial soul…” He gestures uselessly with his right hand. “It’s the colour of her hair. Her perfume. The sound of her laughter from another room drives everything else out. Her face has become the face of all the saints I can remember – the female saints, obviously.” He mulls it over a moment. “And maybe the ones without beards.”

“You should be thanking those saints that Louis isn’t more of an impediment,” Porthos suggests drily.

“Do you think the two are necessarily irreconcilable?”

“Do I think what two are necessarily irreconcilable?”

“Serving him, loving her.”

“I think that the saying’s true, that no man can serve two masters.”

“And yet, we do,” Aramis returns. “D’Artagnan would die at Constance’s feet if she ever expressed the slightest interest in him doing so, you can’t stop smirking about your Alice. You only have to turn your head to see that love can be cruel as well as kind in it’s mastery.” That isn’t strictly true: all they would see if they turned their heads would be a closed wagon, a young man in the driver’s seat, a cloud of dust churned up from the dry road. They wouldn’t see Athos riding at the rear, riding with his head down, riding as if to his own execution (being ridden himself by such a crushing fear that only numbness can keep from destroying him).

Porthos digs in his heels.

**.**

The horizon rocks like a ship on the sea, but the gloved hand under her elbow isn’t unkind, only unwelcome. He isn’t inherently cruel, Buckingham’s voiceless hangman – how can he be, when the Duke reserves all such cruelty for himself. It gleams behind his eyes, reflecting the daylight, declining to let it penetrate too deep. Anne is past interest. She spits at him, burning saliva which tastes of fear and her stomach lining, but it falls short, watering the grass at his feet. Her right hand is swelling in sympathy with the maimed little finger, and though she wants to raise it up, to cradle it, a woman as unsentimental as Milady was would wonder why she should make the effort.

After all, it won’t be hurting much longer.

_It had to be Pinon._

It might as well be. It’s where she came to life, the place of her second birth, waking up that first morning with a sense of blissful suffocation to be surrounded by sheets, to be surrounded by silence.

 _It has to be Pinon_.

Her bare feet, shoes removed for the safety of the executioner once she starts to kick, have met the springiness of bare boards like these before, with only air beneath. She’ll reacquaint herself with the air too before long, but at least she’s too parched to piss herself this time.

Anne cups her broken hand like a nosegay. When she catches sight of the man in brown, another echo of another day (as if this day weren’t bad enough), she ponders how her memory could be so faulty. Athos, for his sins, never sat a horse as if he were better suited to a side-saddle, nor looked likely to hurtle over its head mid-gallop.

Athos would never present such a poor picture of a hero, but Athos isn’t here.

Buckingham braces his arm, fires, hisses like a cat when his shot goes wide.

Felton bellows something, fires and hits the executioner. The tall man crumples. No one watches him fall because no one cares, least of all Anne. Buckingham fires again, but the would-be assassin has already pulled his feet out of the stirrups, has already leapt from the horse in an act of superior artistry and supreme idiocy which has the Duke drawing his sword. Felton hits the ground with a bone-rattling thud, rolls neatly, and comes up with his own sword. “Villain!” He roars.

Buckingham merely purses his lips.

She sprains her ankle jumping off the cart, keels right over on top of the dead executioner. Blood immediately soaks her white gown, but Anne is up and hopping before she can learn anything more about him other than that he’s male, he’s dead, and better him than her. She needs to get away, but she needs to bend over and puke again first, the forearm of the twisted hand pinned to her side by the whole arm, keeping it lifted to slow the bleeding but doing very little for the forks of lightning crackling down up to her shoulder, down to her toes. Felton is giving as good as he gets on the other side of the cart, which isn’t especially good. Praise God for the Duke’s masochist tendencies, for spinning this out, for playing with his least deadly enemy (though Anne suspects Felton is on the cusp of discovering just how deadly he is, providing he lives out the day) and striking the sword instead of the swordsman. The nobleman dances like he was born to it, but he cheats, putting the sun behind him, feinting from side-to-side so he’s more difficult to spot. Felton is crimson-faced, sweating, tiring. He throws off his brown cape, grunting with effort, while Buckingham’s rice powder hasn’t yet begun to smear.

Caught between doing the honourable thing and running for her life, Anne misses Sarazin, Richelieu, Rochefort, any of the men who never would’ve put her in this position if they’d stepped in to save her from whatever peril might deprive them of vassal, thief, assassin, informer. Brave men aren’t always clever men, but a clever man can be brave as well as devious. If only Felton were clever, and not brave, there would be no question of the honourable thing. There would be no honour in it.

Can she leave him to die?

Can she let Buckingham kill him?

Escape starts off at a shuffle, as fast as her damned ankle will permit, teeth gritted. She hears profanities being hurled in English behind her, but even if Felton doesn’t last long enough to get her back to the carriage, he might still be able to give her a head start. Anne keeps her head down, ploughing through the balmy morning, hobbling and tottering with each wash of dizziness and dizzy half-relief but making not a sound, not cursing, not crying. Here a man put his mouth on her until she cried, and here the same man ordered a noose around her neck, and here they are again, fighting to continue in a world of danger and damnation and summer skies.

Athos isn’t a safe thought, he doesn’t sustain her. He’s impossible, and eats her up, and distraction may still prove fatal if it slows her descent to the road. She sets him aside, gripping her arm, heavily favouring the opposite ankle, scuttling away from memories like a rat released from a trap.

She hears a masculine scream, the thump of a fallen foe actually falling.

“Whoreson,” she breathes.

It’s the matter of a minute for George Villiers to grab her around the waist, to lift her off her feet, reeking of perspiration. Such uncouth humanity is an anathema to him, but no amount of scent can cover the reek of man, not even the reek of blood.

“Whore.”

Like a broken doll, she fights him with half her limbs, kicking like a rabbit, screeching, because his cock is like a fist against her rump, aroused beyond the bounds of possibility and depravity, and to die knowing how much he’ll enjoy her dying it is worse than death itself. Death has been coming for her since she was young, skinny and spectral in the Court of Miracles, wasting away to a pair of woman’s green eyes in a girl’s bony face when her mother neglected to feed her because business was bad or she was disinclined or she forgot her daughter, the abortion which hadn’t taken, the dirty needle which only served to interest Anne de Breuil in sharp objects and where she could bury them.

She was born lashing out, disastrously full-term, hideous in her adult beauty.

She’ll die vindicated and beautiful, but that is no consolation.

He gets her on the cart, gets the rope around her neck tightly enough to hold her in place for the last terrible moments. Felton’s body is lost in the long grass, that one cry the only sign to Anne that she ever had a champion.

“Do you have anything you wish to say?”

He wants so desperately for her to look at him, for him to be the last thing printed on her eyeballs before they fill with blood, but she doesn’t oblige. No amount of torture could make her oblige. No amount of torture would break her now.

She whispers the end of everything onto the breeze, and the wind carries it away before Buckingham can make out the single word.

“ _Olivier_.”

The coachman cracks his whip, and the carriage sets off once again for Le Havre. Jingling harness and clip-clopping hooves drown out the birds in the hedgerows, drown out complaining grasshoppers and the occasional dry slither of an adder. Even if he tried, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, statesman, traitor, libertine, murderer, couldn’t hear the rasp of hessian against bark, the sound of a rope gone taut, the hideous absence of sound that is the counterbalance of an innocent woman’s hopes hanging slack.

Her naked feet dangle a foot above the ground, straining.

**.**

Murmuring in Arabic, Hebrew, Italian, Hamza Alaman traces invisible lines above the King’s head, around the circumference of his skull. Hyssop tea hasn’t eased his cough, and His Majesty’s physicians lurk in the corners of the room, stiff, old-fashioned yellowish ruffs and stiff, unwelcoming yellowish faces contrasting unfavourably (for them) with the ochre of the Moor’s robe, with the mahogany of his skin. They bleed him more than is healthy, in Alaman’s opinion. Only bad wounds should be lanced, good blue veins should never be cut unless every other option has been exhausted.

Louis’ eyes are large, liquid brown. Today he’s more doe than king. “Will I die, Alaman?”

“Not today, Your Majesty.”

“Soon?”

“Not soon, Your Majesty.”

He’d better not, for the Queen has a baby in her belly as deserving of love and, the herbalist adds to himself, kind ignorance as the Dauphin. His lungs, though weak, have been weak for a long time. Alaman considers taking a history, but doesn’t deem it worth inciting the wrath of the crows who call themselves doctors to answer questions his books of anatomy can explain far better, and in finer detail.

“Where is Her Majesty?” Her husband enquires suddenly.

“She is praying, Your Majesty.”

“It seems to me sometimes that all she ever does is pray.”

“In times such as these, Your Majesty…” Alaman shrugs. It’s not a French shrug, not a quick up-down, but a muscular roll that has his shoulders flowing up like water pouring from a cup. In times such as these, where strong men die on the word of a deer king with weak lungs who is doing his best, but whose best may not be good enough before many are past the point of saving. “What else is there to do but pray?”

One of the doctors surreptitiously crosses himself.

**.**

So John Felton will die as he lived: a failure, as a soldier, to his country, to the lady. History will hardly remember him fondly; history will remember him not at all.

He half-rolls, half-drags himself out of the verge and onto the road, clutching his side, seeing two or three of everything and damning himself for every fumbling footstep. He wears brown because it’s cheap, because it reduces him to insignificance, and because he’s never cared to do otherwise – now, with dirt from the narrow track mingling with his coating of sweat and blood, it truly becomes his colour. He could lie down here and die, helpless to help, and his corpse would go unnoticed by any passers-by. Even in death, he would fail to assault the senses.

He imagines four or more, a score of the young man on the horse, before the young man on the horse recognises him.

“Time,” he pants, robbed of loquacity at last. “Still time!”

“What?” D’Artagnan began to run almost before he’d fully dismounted. He’s at the Englishman’s side faster than John Felton’s fading faculties can comprehend. “Still time for –”

“ _Leave_!” The man in brown snaps. “Leave me! No time…for me, still time…for her. _Her_ ,” he insists, goggling up at the musketeer. “Still time!”

“Where?” D’Artagnan abandons his sense of honour long enough to shake a dying man, who can’t feel it anyway. “Where is she, Felton? Where?”

“Tree,” he says dreamily. He’s so close to sleep now, close to death (and nowhere near the glorious history he himself and History itself has planned). “Gallows tree.”

Thundering up the hill with the sun climbing alongside him, Aramis braces himself, levels an arquebus at the thin silver thread he can just make out by squinting. Porthos is on his left but not far enough ahead to miss the movement, and he leans low over his bay’s neck to clear the line of sight. D’Artagnan, on his other side, is aghast.

“You’ll kill her for sure if you shoot her down! Aramis!”

“If I don’t, she’ll be dead before we reach her!”

“Wait for Porthos, at least!”

“D’Artagnan, I _can’t_!” Aramis doesn’t dare turn to explain and risk losing the shot. He’s anguish itself, anguish incarnate, caught in the impossibility of letting murder happen or committing murder himself. A long drop with no trapdoor and no experienced hangman to plan for his prisoner’s weight has next to no chance of the mercy of a broken neck – but the white figure hangs unmoving against a backdrop of blue sky. If he had any idea how long she’d been there, perhaps. If he’d attended more hangings himself, seen more men die, seen more ladies dance their final dance, perhaps. In this moment, though, Aramis the thinker and Aramis the romantic are as one –

And he fires.

The ball goes straight and clean, and the beauty of timing and of grace is that Porthos hurls himself into the grass as she falls. He isn’t close enough to catch her, but he knocks the tumbling body sideways, and by the time the crack of the shot has faded away, Porthos has her on her back and Aramis is down and running and d’Artagnan is running and Athos is faster than them all and honestly demented and not one of his friends can spare a thought for him, or a glance.

“Aramis!”

“Here.” Her lips are blue, and her eyelids, but her cheeks are merely white, and where that soulfully violet tinge is absent, there’s hope. “Porthos, I can’t, I have to –”

“Show me where.”

They both have large hands, strong fingers, but one man has more strength than dexterity and the other the other’s strength and weakness, so Porthos pounds out the rhythm of a heartbeat on Anne’s stubborn breast, hard enough that her ribs judder, that her entire frame judders, but that’s all to the good, so much the better. Aramis fulfils his roles as the soldier he is and the priest he should’ve been, courage and succour, and wraps his arms around his captain, what was Athos and is now Olivier, as pale as his wife, incomprehensible, holding him at bay as he scrabbles at the ground to get to her, to be with her, to crouch by her side where he can only do more harm, the bones of his face standing out like spars, his struggles bestial, nothing left of the comte about him and absolutely nothing of the musketeer.

“You have to give her breath, Porthos.”

“I have to get her heart going!”

“It takes more than the heart!”

“ _Aramis_!”

D’Artagnan comes to their aid without being asked, without anyone pausing to ask and wasting the precious time it would take for him to refuse. “There, tilt her head back.” And he handles her so gently, even as they themselves hammer out life and hold back love with so much of ferocity and so little of delicacy. “Pinch her nose shut, that’s it.” He’s their brother, their baby brother, but Aramis and Porthos wouldn’t claim to understand the nature of his feelings for the woman in his arms, their history, the questions she made him ask himselfabout himself, what with hindsight he knows was for Athos, to show Athos, what he still considers his own, her own, if he ever condescends to remember.

The world is quiet, as dead as the Comtesse de la Fère was dead, is dead as they labour over her, for Athos, for Anne, for a shared past along the Rue de Temple, for the gift of a second chance on a doomed love, for the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

But the comtesse died, was born again as Milady de Winter.

Milady de Winter dies, is born again as they know not what, not yet.

Her eyes are merely pockets for all the veins in her head, their colour indeterminate. They count one, two, three musketeers with an ostensible lack of surprise – as if she expected them to be there, as if she could’ve told them they would be. She seems younger, though, more like a girl who may have, once, worn flowers in her hair. There are flowers all around her now, thick as a carpet in the grass, but she disregards them; she wants him, of course.

His hands shown the bloody crescent moons of nail marks, stubbled with the tiny petals of forget-me-nots.

The circle has been broken.

**.**

No one bothers to discuss Buckingham on the ride back to Paris, the creamy, self-indulgent sense of relief they share too filling to leave space for revenge. The day is won, if not without cost. There’s a tacit agreement that the Duke should be included in that cost, and despite the indisputable fact that the track isn’t wide enough for three, they try.

Athos sits in the back of the wagon with his hands braced on his knees. He’s staring. He’s staring, and trying to say…what? Everything, he decides. It’s time to say everything, everything there is for him to say to the woman seated opposite him, somehow upright, somehow composed despite the grey scarf knotted firmly over the fresh wound over the first wound on her neck, robbed of speech but eloquent enough for him, for now, until she’s ready.

They still haven’t touched each other.

“You must…” Yes, his voice is there, he just has to stop choking on it long enough to use it. “You must stop this.”

She regards him without expression. This time, silence is her ally, not his.

“You court death like other women court favour,” he goes on, aiming for irreverence and missing because he _is_ reverent, of her, of her life, of her beating heart, of her breath, of the new scar forming along the line of her throat. “I forbid it, Anne, I forbid _you_.” Athos’ hands don’t belong to him. They’re trembling too hard to be of much use to anyone, they grasp the wood under him when they should be reaching for her. “You’re mine.” And to use the words, not to go around the words or upend the words or pretend the words haven’t been cowering inside him his whole life is tantamount to putting his head on the block and hoping against hope she isn’t inclined to swing the axe. “You’re mine, and I forbid you to go. I forbid you to die. I forbid to throw yourself in the path of death at every opportunity, I forbid you to leave me when you know, when you know without a shadow of a doubt that I would go to England with you because I would go to Hell with you, Anne –”

He only stops in deference to the pistol pressed against his chest. How she got it out of his belt quite so quickly is a matter for another time.

“No.” Only the consonants, only the harsh edges make it pass her lips, compliments of her teeth. “Not yours. I am not yours. I will never be yours, and yours alone. I won’t live for you. I didn’t die for you. I am mine. I will be mine and yours as you are yours and mine but not yours alone, not again. Not ever again. I won’t let you swallow me, I won’t consume you.” Anne the gun into the warm, soft place that is his heart, the bones which separate them immaterial, still pale as a ghost, still swathed in her shroud.

He meets and matches her eyes with his, grey with green, the latest in a long line of such looks which would be unfathomable to anyone else.

“Adsumus,” he replies.

 _We are here_.

It’s better for their future together that neither ever realises that Aramis confiscated Athos’ ammunition earlier, diluted the threat to nothing. She drops the pistol to curl around him, for him to curl around her, a couple of sun-baked serpents eating their own tails, and he likes to believe he understands why she sinks her teeth into his shoulder, a baby denied the teat, denied nourishment for twenty years or more, and maybe that’s why there’s no pain, no anything as he winds her hair around his battered fist, breathing in the same scent as before, before jasmine and orange flower, of skin and salt and sunshine and salvation.

“There is something I must ask you.” He can taste tears, but whose? “But not now. When you’re stronger.”

She’s strong enough to bury him if she felt so inclined, but she doesn’t say so. She puts her thumb just in the join of his chin and his lower lip, an old caress which leads where it always has, which is where she wants to go. He kisses her so carefully at first, but when has that ever been their way? Tenderness can survive even amongst nipping, bruising lips against lips, shifting grips to back, to waist, burning her smooth cheek with his rough cheek, licking away tears instead of wiping them.

Less than a league away, a man who is himself very far away from home stirs, pleased to discover that not only is he not dead, but in no danger of being dead any time soon. When he manages to track down his horse, they too will go to Le Havre.

Thence, by ship, to Portsmouth.

Thence, by road, to the Greyhound Inn, armed with a dagger and a long list of grievances which has just recently become longer.

History will remember John Felton, the man in brown.


	20. Epilogue

“I am too old for this.”

“Hardly old, old friend.”

Athos regards Aramis censoriously in the mirror, a small oblong of looking-glass he rarely bothers to consult from one week to the next. “I am too old,” he repeats, very deliberately. “To quite possibly be subverting the laws of God and France for the benefit of others, specifically you and Constance.”

“You can’t fool me,” Aramis replies, unperturbed. He folds his cuff up over the heel of his hand and uses it to buff, with no small amount of pride, the fleur-de-lis on his captain’s newly commissioned pauldron – and then, with no small amount of care, the forget-me-nots which writhe around it, a chivalric gesture if ever there was one. They have their orders, and their orders are Spain, but Athos will not go into battle alone (he would never go into battle alone, but that’s hardly the point, and Aramis tidies it away into the same corner of his mind into which he swept Athos’ objections to today). “You bathed, you shaved, you trimmed, you polished. This matters to you.”

Fundamentally, they appear the same: two military men reflected as they are by the mirror. They differ in posture – Aramis loose-limbed, ready but not chomping at the bit, Athos wound as tight as a clock spring – in colouring – and if it amuses one to see how pale the other has gone with waiting, he isn’t saying anything – and in importance – he, Aramis, is not the reason for today, nor the focus of it.

“It wasn’t like this before. It was quick. We were…impatient.”

Aramis chuckles. “Good to see some things haven’t changed.”

“Some things never change.”

Through the intervention of fate alone, this being the only church and the only priest they could get at such short notice (and only with d’Artagnan slowly and hypnotically swinging a chinking bag back and forth in front of the ancient churchman’s nose), Athos’ surroundings are familiar to him. This chapel is the least well-lit and well-appointed in the city, practically Protestant in its lack of vestments and hangings and gold thread. There are but four members of the congregation, and when he stops dithering in the vestibule and remembers he’s a musketeer, a sworn protector of the King of France and, therefore, better than this, his footsteps echo loudly enough to rebound off the high ceiling, and Father Corday winces.

The rheumy old priest clears his throat. For his sins, he most resembles a white rabbit, bloodshot, with long dangling earlobes and a crust of white hair. In Athos’ memory, he had a few more strands of hair, but otherwise, he ought to have mouldered to dust years ago. “Before we commence, messieurs, who gives this woman to his man?”

Porthos stands before he’s finished the question. “Me,” he booms, as if to drown out anyone who might try to usurp the honour. “I do.”

Father Corday appears to have temporarily lost the power of speech. “And you, sir…you are her…you are this lady’s…”

“Her brother –”

“Cousin.”

Athos hasn’t allowed himself to look at her before now, a pointless penance. It’s the penance of a bridegroom, however, which is what he is today, all over again, older and yet not older, changed and yet unchanging, as she is the same and not the same. Having no such edict against bad luck, he looks to find her already looking – studying him with her pickpocket’s eyes, with her green cat’s eyes. She notes first his restless hands, fingers sliding over one another in the absence of something to hold. Her face is like glass. He sees her committing him to memory, taking him to heart.

If Anne were somewhere instead of someone, there would be a library of him inside her. There would be tens of hundreds of thousands of books listing everything, every breath, every trespass, every barb which dug in or which made her laugh. If she were somewhere, though, the part of her that was Athos would still be just that part of her, just that one room. She, Anne, is a thousand thousand rooms, and her skin is a window to her soul, and today the light shines through it, even in this least glorious of places.

The priest sneezes explosively, continuing to fail dismally at maintaining the solemnity of the occasion. Wiping his red nose on his grubby stole, he enquires, “You are the lady’s brother-cousin?”

“We’re from Gascony,” she tells him breezily.

Porthos nods. “Very close families they – we – have there.”

D’Artagnan scowls.

They’re here, in spite of everything. They’re all here, and Constance is here, wearing sections of her own wedding dress stitched into something bright and new and cheerful, a fat, glossy braid trailing over one shoulder. At least half of this is her doing, and when Athos meets her gaze, he knows that the blue gown was her idea, that it was she who tied the blue ribbon binding up the posy. These are her gifts to him on his wedding day, his compassionate, shrewd and lovely friend dressing his caustic, beautiful and disobliging wife as a bride so beginning again would feel like a beginning, again.

He’d have to ask her how _that_ had come about, whether there’d been any blood drawn.

“And your name, sir?”

“Athos,” says Athos shortly.

“Have you no other name? No title?”

“Doesn’t use it,” puts in Porthos.

“Doesn’t like it,” adds Aramis.

Father Corday wheezes briefly at the irregularity of it all. “And you, madame?”

“De Winter. Anne de Winter.”

Let him have two marriages to her name, and her only one. It signifies nothing. Let the great dusty book Father Corday is barely able to lift state that Olivier d’Athos de la Fère married a woman who died, so he married a woman who lived. If they’re both named Anne, so much the better (and when whoever King Philip sends does come snooping, he’ll seem that much more consistent). The Spanish _will_ come, following the bloody trail left by de la Vega, and when their blades glance off him and their balls fly past him, they’ll come for her – let them come, for her worth to him will be real now, tangible, written down. The gallant captain has something to lose, and so he is no longer incorruptible.

She smooths her skirts, her hair; he’s watching her. She bats away a fuzzy, dun-coloured moth; he’s still watching her.

“I know you have it.”

“You know no such thing.”

But when he extends his hand, she drops the gold circlet into his palm, and the metal is warm from her sleeve.

“Thank you.”

Anne’s cheeks flame. He knew she’d have kept it, as she knew he’d keep the glove. A woman wore this ring on her fourth finger once, a girl whom only Athos, of the dearly beloved gathered here this day, has met.

And yet she won’t kiss him, not here. She’s kissed to seek approval before, and as much as she’s learnt to care for them, Porthos her brother, Aramis her friend, d’Artagnan her saviour and student, she won’t trade her own happiness for coos and sighs. Their kisses are their own, hers and Athos’, too many in a day to count. When she leans against the wooden siding, one eye on the yard, when she sees d’Artagnan call a halt to his fight to kiss Constance, she smiles. She smiles because they’ve never had their lips stitched shut, their love unpicked by a parting too bitter to linger on today. Her husband will never kiss his wife like that, as if it comes easy.

As if it comes cheap.

Kisses are worth a dozen of the Queen’s diamonds, and when they’ve finally paused to draw breath in the middle of an argument, closed the door on the gawping recruits who listen to what she says because she’s Milady, _the_ Milady de Winter, _that_ Milady, and if she tells them they should drive up from below with their knives, they should obey, even if it isn’t honourable, even if the fact that it isn’t honourable will be driven home to them by their commander for the next month. They cross paths during drill apparently by chance, and he tolerates her while she sits and observes and doesn’t comment, but then something will happen which raises her to her feet, and before he orders her out, she’ll have run her fingertip along the length of his drawn sword, flicked a glance upwards from under her lashes. He’ll yield, because he has to yield, but not in front of the boys. She calls him Captain when he dismisses her, obeys her captain so coolly, speaks the word ‘Captain’ as silkily as if that’s what she’d whisper when she had him up against the wall and his sword was in her hand now.

The respective bland and sour flavours of the bread and wine are endured, the priest exhausts his recollection of Latin, the ceremony is over. Technically, Athos has married two different women. Technically, Anne de Breuil is dead. Actually, it’s Milady de Winter who died, and a different person is before them now, brown curls haloing her head, thumb bent inwards to keep the tip pressed to her wedding ring, perhaps to hold it in place, perhaps to reassure herself that the cord between heart finger and heart won’t break.

She used to smell like jasmine, but d’Artagnan inhales orange flower from her hair and lavender from her linen when she kisses his cold cheek.

“I commend him to your care, musketeer.”

“I won’t let you down, Comtesse, I promise you that.”

Anne lifts a wry eyebrow. “I no longer have a title, as you are aware.”

He shrugs. “Thought I’d ease you into it. Madame is a bit of a step down from Milady.”

“Call me Madame d’Athos,” she returns. “And the next time you see me, you’ll be flat on your back, wishing you hadn’t.” But she thumps him lightly on the chest with her fist, and he takes her hand and kisses it, and lets her go with a sense of wistfulness immediately burned away by the firm, proprietary squeeze of Constance’s arm around his waist. Whatever passed between them is the past. The present is where he belongs.

Here is where she belongs.

“Your first wife wasn’t who you believed her to be.”

Athos turns from the necessaries of paying off and waving off the priest to find his wife standing there, slightly apart from the fray (or as much fray as four people can create).

“I was young, rash. I doubt I shall ever be accused of being so again.”

“I hope you chose better this time.”

“Even if I hadn’t, I’ve run out of brothers.”

There’s an instant of heartbreak before he pulls her to him, and life and love go on while Father Corday shuffles off in the background. Thomas is a hurt that can’t be undone, but Thomas’ brother leans his forehead against his killer’s, sees her lashes flicker down in relief, and would far rather be alone in the world but for her than be anyone’s brother – by blood, at least. What brothers he has, he intends to keep, to guard with his life, and when he dies it will be on the battlefield, or when he has grown old, truly old, and discharged his duty, and come home to lay his head in her lap and hope that Heaven offers similar diversions.

“There you are,” she murmurs, the half-teasing proclamation she made to him on the night they found each other again. They’ve found each other again since, of course, so frequently that these past few weeks have made ‘morning’, ‘afternoon’, ‘evening’, ‘night’ and ‘fucking, and not being discreet enough about it’, synonymous.

“And here I will stay, in spirit if not in flesh.”

“Die –” She touches his lower lip, his chin. There’s a scrap of lace pinned to her hair at the back, he hadn’t noticed. “And I’ll drag you back screaming. A hundred thousand Spaniards will be as nothing to me, Athos. I’ll make you _pray_ for a hundred thousand Spaniards.”

“My sweet, summer Anne,” he dubs her sardonically.

“Riding you in a field once or twice hardly makes me a dryad.”

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that in church.”

Porthos materialises at Anne’s elbow, a mystifying ability for one with such breadth and height. “A moment of your time, Captain.”

“Captain?”

Anne, sensing which way the wind is blowing, steps smartly back. Porthos honours her with a bow low enough to her to brush his knees with his black curls, then straightens again with an expression of mild regret. “Sorry.” The corners of his mouth turn down, and then he punches Athos in the jaw with enough force to make him stagger. “Sorry.” He makes another, shallower bow. “But you know what that’s for.”

For a white dress fluttering on the breeze.

For straining white feet.

“I do.” It doesn’t stop the left side of his face pulsing in time with his blood, but Athos recovers. The bruise will be large, purple and painful, but it’ll heal. It’ll fade without leaving a sign of its having been there, and for that, he must count himself lucky. It takes a hot-headed young man to hang a young woman from a tree, a man in love, a man betrayed. That same man has been working to destroy himself, with drink and with fighting, for years, but has never been capable of damage enough to equal the damage he did; she won’t allow him to punish himself anymore, but Porthos can. How he became her champion, Athos still doesn’t understand, but he doesn’t need to. What matters is that there before him is Porthos, blowing gently on his knuckles, that there beside him is Anne, amused and not troubling herself to hide it, and when Aramis raises his head from a conversation which is making Constance laugh, he knows it’s time to go.

Anne sees all with her pickpocket’s eyes, with her green cat’s eyes. “From the altar to the front,” she remarks drily.

“You’d do the same.”

She gives a grudging sort of shrug. “We aren’t the same. I’m a thief and a spy, but because Louis sanctions it, I’m called an asset.”

“You’re a soldier,” Athos counters, not because the thought of Anne and Louis and Anne-and-Louis is redolent of bile, but because it’s the truth. “We are the same.”

She told him so.

She taught him so.

An alley, rain streaming off the rooves. A locket chain, twisted, cutting into his neck. Her hot mouth. She wouldn’t kiss him before the priest but she does kiss him now, hard, crushing her body against his. He grips the back of her neck, hard, she cages him with her arms.

“Just like you.”

Porthos grins and thinks of Alice.

“…and if I find out you’ve been running bare-arsed around another Spanish prison, you’ll be better off in Madrid than you will in Paris.” Constance smooths the dark wings of d’Artagnan’s hair back from his temples, her heart swelling to fill her chest, her bodice, to fill the entire chapel with love and attendant smugness. He is _unfairly_ handsome. “I mean it.”

“I didn’t say you didn’t.”

She draws back a little, but only to take in the full picture – only, by squinting, to see if she can divine what exactly about him has changed. “The man I married wouldn’t have saved Milady, d’Artagnan.” Her smile makes d’Artagnan shift slightly, hold her tighter. It’s too close to sad. “You’re not the boy who kissed me and fainted at my feet in the market. You shine so brightly sometimes, it’s a wonder you don’t blind yourself.”

“Why, Constance…”

“Don’t you say a word. Just listen: I love you.” Her eyes are blue and grave and luminous. “And I always will, even though you’re an idiot and you rush into everything and you somehow manage to tear all your shirts.”

“I love you,” he says sincerely. “I always have, since the first moment I saw you. I can’t help it. I don’t want to help it. I want to be with you forever, Constance, so whatever it is you’re trying to tell me, you don’t have to. I know.” He catches up a brown curl, lighter in shade than the bride’s, redder. “You won’t even know I’m gone.”

“Idiot.”

And so it is that Anne de Breuil and Constance d’Artagnan, who never thought to dream they could have so much in common, find themselves standing in the doorway of a gloomy church on a sunny morning, alone but for one another and the sound of fading hoofbeats.

“Constance?” Anne’s gaze is fixed on the road, but her lips look speculative.

“Yes?”

“Get me out of this dress.”

She’s halfway out of the sleeves before Constance can turn her head, stripping off her wedding gown quite without shame to reveal the cut-down breeches, the stiletto, the pistol as Constance throws both caution and fashion to the wind and breaks her laces with one swift yank.

“Where are you going?”

“Spain.” Anne is already breathing faster, God and lace and the Comtesse de la Fère forgotten.“And if there’s a brain between those pretty ears of yours, you’ll come with me.”

She has her orders too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seventy thousand words plus is enough; I won't bore you with many more, all of which will just be fancier ways of saying thank you ever so: for reading, for supporting, for being consumers and cheerleaders and critics. My heart is full, and you are all in it.
> 
> All for one.

**Author's Note:**

> Historical note: George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham was actually assassinated in August 1628; for the purposes of storytelling, I've pushed back his date of demise by four years. May historians everywhere and Bucky himself forgive me.


End file.
